Function Instead of Uniqueness
When I write, I keep noticing something: I don’t highlight what is “special” about something, but rather its function. I’m less interested in what makes it unique and more in what it does, what it is there for, and how it operates within a structure.
I look at things like components in a system. What position do they take? What forces run through them? What happens if you adjust something exactly at this point, remove it, or shift it? I want to understand how something is embedded—not how to put it on display. More workshop than gallery.
And yet something happens that I don’t fully control: The moment I observe and describe something this deliberately, it automatically becomes special. Simply by selecting it, pulling it to a meta level, building sentences around it, it gains a kind of stage. I want to show the thing in its context—and while doing so, it moves to the centre.
That sense of specialness is not my intention. I want to understand the thing in relation, not in its uniqueness. I don’t write: “Look how extraordinary this is,” but rather: “Look at the role it plays here.” From the inside, it feels like sober analysis. From the outside, it quickly appears like emphasis.
Maybe that is exactly the contradiction: observing makes something visible, and making it visible makes it special—whether I want it or not. The moment I name something, I mark it. The moment I explain it, it gains contour. Where I want to say: “This is how it interlocks,” others read: “This part must be important, otherwise you wouldn’t be writing about it.”
And then there is something else: I am aware that this perspective, too, is only a thought—not the world. One of many possible lenses through which I look. I observe myself both feeding and undermining my own sense of purpose at the same time: I feel the urge to say something—and in the same breath I write that it is “only” one view. Maybe that movement is the most honest part: I show how I look—and remind myself that this way of looking is not the final word.
Written on April 27, 2026 at 13:10. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.