It is a cathartic experience to put pen to paper or fingers on the keyboard every day to note the events of the day passed and our thoughts associated with them. In noting details of the day that appealed to us, we are setting aside a small part of it to contemplate what we learned from it. Sometimes jotting everyday affairs, helps us look back at the joy of routine and sometimes our struggles.
A journal helps us articulately voice our thoughts. Sometimes we fear telling our thoughts aloud. We allow our worries and concerns to overwhelm us so much that day-to-day functioning may become difficult. We lock them up in our brain, letting them simmer and boil, the pressure building up as it would in a pressure cooker, until we can take no more.
For a lot of us, we do not feel safe enough to confide some of our thoughts to our closest friends even. We may sometimes confide in God in prayer but nobody seems to be our safe space. In some situations, we do not want to bother our near and dear ones with our problems. In still others, we want to remember the gossamer-like events of our life for posterity, alive even after we have gone.
We are not alone in this regard, our knowledge of life in the past has often come alive through the journals of many people, some geniuses and some others ordinary folk. Journaling helps us air out our thoughts, help us take a clearer course of action and sometimes it helps us just stay afloat.
Journaling does not require any special paper or stationery, just a small chunk of the day to write and reflect. We just need to let our thoughts flow freely; it can be done any day. You can draw your thoughts like Leonardo DaVinci or simply write the events of the day like John Evelyn, botanist and landscaper.
Medical practitioners recommend maintaining a journal for better mental and physical health. Writing about stressful or traumatic events can help you come to terms with them. Dr James Pennebaker developed an expressive writing protocol.
In this protocol he suggests one writes for 15-20 minutes continuously, repeating themselves if they have to. He suggests writing on four consecutive days, only for yourself. Of course, when you journal you can share parts you feel comfortable with family or friends.
Anne Frank was only 13-year-old when she started writing in her journal in 1942. She continued to do so while she hid in an annexe of her father’s office to escape discovery by the Nazis. She wrote to her imaginary friend Kitty and to her real friends who never received them. This remarkable young girl documented the hardship, her feelings and everyday life as she and her family tried to stay hidden.
Anne Frank’s Diary and books
Image source: Anne Frank’s Diary: the graphic adaptation
DaVinci, inventor, artist, architect and engineer wrote about 3 pages daily, between the ages of 26 and 67. He used his journals to write about the things he imagined in his mind. His notebooks are filled with designs, thoughts, notes, and observations all of which he synthesized for his creations. He usually wrote on loose sheaves of sheets while outdoors and compiled them later to analyze and understand.
Marie Curie’s notebooks meticulously documented all her technical findings. You can read them today in lead-lined boxes at France’s Bibliotheque National in Paris since they are still radioactive.
Her diaries are of a person who is consumed by work. Her thoughts all swirl around her work, its ideation and execution.
Image source: https://swips.weebly.com/marie-curie.html
Beethoven’s diaries reveal how he coped with his deafness and the depression accompanying it.
Author Ryan Holiday eloquently writes about stoicism, action and stillness journals. Journaling is an act of meditating on life and what it has to teach him. His journaling bears witness to what he has persevered through, his perceptions and their outcomes.
“In the diary, you find proof that in situations which today would seem unbearable, you lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand moved then as it does today, when we may be wiser because we are able to look back upon our former condition, and for that very reason have got to admit the courage of our earlier striving in which we persisted even in sheer ignorance.”, Holiday observes.
He has several ideas on how you can maintain a journal. Maintaining a certain time of the day, even for 5 to 10 minutes of journaling is a good start. It can be a simple collection of everyday events, a diary of ideas, a gratefulness journal or one that puts your conflict on paper and questions your choices.
It is also important, he notes, to just write it down without the pressure of it becoming something readable. One can vent their frustrations in a journal without sending it out to the intended.
A journal then becomes a channel of conversation with ourselves, which we can reread to make sense of our thoughts and emotions.
My vociferous bargaining in favour of journaling, dear reader, may make you think I am a veteran in journalling. On the contrary, I have made up my mind to start journaling daily. This thought has gained currency after the loss of my dear father. I was bereft and emotionally marooned like a ship in the doldrums on losing him. I took out the nearest notebook and simply started noting down everything I felt at the moment. As I wrote the words, I spilt copious tears on them. In putting down my thoughts on paper I found my bearings again. Journaling helped me to somewhat come to terms with losing him.
Humans are so complex and sometimes we miss our patterns of thinking. We often refuse to acknowledge the pressure, grief, exhilaration and peace in day-to-day life. A journal helps us stop a while and take that much-needed breather as we continue to walk on.
Some of the resources mentioned in the post are:
Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation. You can buy your copy, by clicking on this link, Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation
Want to look at DaVinci's Diaries? Click on this Modern Met link to see his different Codex diaries on display in different museums.
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