The Stories of Our Lives

Some of my journals, and Batty

In our journals, we tell the stories of our lives. 

Our lives can be re-excavated the moment we summon the courage to pick up one of our old journals.  It leads me to wonder.  What is the natural impulse to want to tell our stories intimately, and we hope privately, within the pages of little lined-paper books?

Why do it?  We could call a friend, or talk to anyone in our lives with an ear to hear us, but we turn instead to the pages of our notebooks.  Words begin to flow, and as we write ideas come to us that enable us to see a situation in a different light.  Or, perhaps, there’s simply a need to express a feeling like disgust, or anger, one more time, because to do so is a way of expunging a very unpleasant emotion that we’re trying to expel.

As we put a pen to paper, as we indulge in the outmoded, physical act of writing, our brains become mysteriously capable translators of our inner selves.

And this act of putting down our thoughts helps with so many things.  It can aid, for instance, with a process of discernment.  Maybe what’s needed is that stronger boundaries are required in one’s life.  Or maybe it dawns upon you as you’re writing and reflecting that you’re the one acting from your shadow self.  If so, it may be a journal session devoted to self-refection with the result that you begin to see your own reactivity with more clarity.

In the pages of our journals, we can also rewrite endings or imagine our way out of predicaments. Often my journal entries end in prayers, because I’m feeling frankly powerless.  In this mode, my entries might become opportunities to delve deeply into soul work.  A journal entry can veer into the territory of prayer because we’re miserable, or desperately wanting clarity, answers, or relief from whatever earthly drama has gripped us, owing to real circumstances or to our over-active imaginations.  As well, we turn to journals to record ineffable moments of joy with the hopes that describing such moments will give them permanence.

For me, journaling has always been a way to process anger as well.  On May 12, 2003, for instance, I wrote this: “To say it briefly, women are experts at finding reasons to doubt themselves, geniuses at finding ways to diminish their accomplishments.  Tearing ourselves down becomes a habit of being, a habit of the heart.  It is unacceptable.  My goal is to stop doing it myself and to interject when I hear women doing it to themselves.  It’s the kind of self-sabotage that wastes lives.” 

Words written in silence, and anonymously, are nevertheless dispersed into the world energetically, just as private prayers infiltrate the atmosphere that we all breath, affecting changes we cannot imagine and may never know. 

Since we can be completely straightforward within the pages of our notebooks, our emotions might be expressed without censorship owing to habits of pleasing, appeasement, accommodation, and flattery.  Words written between the covers of a journal are conversations held outside the bounds of convention and conventional expectations. We are beholden only to ourselves. 

Journal writing develops and encourages our most authentic, least suppressed selves.  To that, I say—BRAVO.

If you’re inclined to express your deepest selves in the pages of a private notebook, let the world not distract you away from pursuing this most sacred calling.  This narcissistic-leaning world needs individuals inclined toward self-reflection. 

It leads us into greater humility, into prayer.