Why Are You Doing What You Do?

This is from an interview of Maya Lin by Bill Moyers. It caught my attention immediately upon reading it:

I try to understand the "why" of a project before it's a "what."

This resonates with what I've been thinking about lately while talking to Open Door. It relates to my pursuit of things with purpose. Of making a living doing something that has meaning. Of doing things beyond just making money or gaining recognition. It's all about finding 'the path with heart.' About doing things that make a worthy contribution to the world.

She goes on to say:

There is a definite need for something. So, then you have to say, "What is it? What should that be? What do I wanna do here? What would I like to accomplish? What are the goals?" I tend to almost sketch an idea sometimes with text.

I'll write. I'll sit down and I'll just write what I think I wanna say here, what needs to be said, how to do it. I try not to second-guess it by finding a form and then trying to apply meaning or function to the form.

If you have the pre-conceived idea of what you think it looks like before you really shape it verbally, then you're trying to stuff function into a pre-existing form. What I love doing in a lot of my works is to write about it because you can get a conceptual sketch of what you think you want without any form. And then usually, the form finds me.

From the transcript of the PBS show - Becoming American