For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
Not long ago I stumbled upon a brilliant quote that read:
“Those who do not keep journals will be defined by those who do.”
(OK, I didn’t really stumble upon it because I authored it, posted it, and then went back and stumbled upon it.) (Link here)
I’ve actually thought a lot about this idea, and still believe it to be true – but I think that I need to add a corollary:
“Those who do keep journals will define themselves – for good or ill.”
So you may think the corollary isn’t as wildly profound as the original quote. Possibly, but let me explain. I won’t waste your time, and you just might thank me later…
Over the past few weeks, I have spent some time looking through my old journals. I was surprised to discover that I have had a miserable life, full of sadness, sickness, loneliness, and frustration. At least that’s what you would think if you read my journals. It turns out that my most prolific journaling times in my life were when I was going through important periods that had a higher degree of difficulty. And I was failing. Two periods stand out as the best examples:
1) When I was a teenager, my dad got a job transfer and we had to relocate. I was miserable. I hated my parents. I was sullen, angry and depressed. And since we moved at the beginning of summer, I had nothing to do – except write in my journal about how miserable I was, and how my parents were destroying my life.
2) On my mission I was a faithful journal keeper – as long as I had negative things to write about. I faithfully wrote down each time I was sick, when my companion was a jerk, when the weather was bad, or when we weren’t having very much success.
Here’s the problem: I have had a great life! I had a happy childhood. I had a wonderful, successful mission. So what gives? Why the deep, dark version recorded for my posterity? I think I have the answer.
When I’m happy, and things are going great, I don’t bother writing it down, because I am too busy enjoying life to stop and write about it. I may well have written about my companion who drove me crazy, but when the work was good, it was very good, and I just never felt compelled to stop, take a breath, and write it down. In high school I stopped grousing about how unfair my teenage life was about the same time that school started and I made some new friends. But that part, mysteriously, never got recorded.
The best, but saddest, case in point is that I have rarely written in my journal since I got married. Because I am happy. Ridiculously happy. All of the wonderful experiences that have given my life richness and meaning are undocumented – leaving behind a history that paints me as a poor, unfortunate soul, in pain, in need. (courtesy Ursula)
So, I have volumes of life history that paints an entirely inaccurate version of what my life has been up until now. Sure the dour snippets are accurate in their context, but they were the exception, not the norm.
So, what do I do? How do I go back and correct the record without looking like I am trying to “shine my halo” for posterity’s sake? Here are some thoughts:
1) Compile my missionary journal with the letters I sent home to create a more balanced view.
2) Scan my old journals and annotate them with comments as I feel necessary.
3) (Shudder) Actually write a personal history that my posterity can look at as the de-facto version of my life.
Yikes! They all sound so daunting. So, I raise this voice of warning: Make sure your blog entries and journals are not just repositories of angst – because one day you will look back and wish you had documented the joy along with the pain to really be known as who you really are. And if you don’t I will be there to mock you for not paying better attention to my warning.
Suggestions appreciated.
.
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I agree with the “add letters to the journals” idea. About a year ago, I started scanning my mission journals with the intent of mixing them with the emails, etc. I plan on using using the optical PDF search option, to be able to search either/or for specific areas or people. I’d love to have an index for them. By scanning them, I can also include pictures. FUN!
[Posted on behalf of Ardis: (Who needs a better internet connection)
If you don’t know Ardis, you are missing out. Check out her blog http://www.keepapitchinin.org – her button is on my blog roll -MMM-]
I often crack wise and note that as a historian who paws through the diaries and letters of other people, I know better than to leave a journal for some future historian to paw through.
But that’s really not true. My greatest difficulty with journalkeeping is that I try to do to much. I try to record a minute account of the day’s doings, and it becomes so boring and takes so long that my journalkeeping never really takes off.
For the past few years, though, I’ve done a little better. I keep my journal in an ordinary word processing document, which I keep open and running in the background of the laptop on which I work (and play) 15 or more hours every day. Every once in a while, I click over to it and just write a paragraph or two about the project I’m working on, or who stopped by my library table to chat for a few moments, or my impressions of some breaking news event. I find it much easier to satisfy my obsessive desire to document every boring minute detail without boring myself while doing it.
Once in a while, too, I will find myself wishing that the writer of some historical document I’m using had bothered to include the details of such-and-such, usually an ordinary activity of life that has changed so much that I don’t understand how they were doing it in 1864. Then I’ll take a half hour and write an essay, like Chris describes, about that aspect of my own life. Sometimes I’ve even written about the process for washing dishes or preparing a Sunday School lesson, hoping that it will be of interest to someone after those processes have changed sufficiently.
Then, too, I wonder who will ever care and who will ever read any of it. I won’t appear on anybody’s pedigree chart, so there’s no natural audience for my personal journal. But what the hey, it will be there, for whoever.
I was inspired by this scripture in Nephi recently, “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God;..” (2 Nephi 25:23)…so, I have started a “spiritual personal history.” I am compiling a “personal history” that shows the way that my testimony has evolved over the years.
Very good advice. And yes, I think a lot of people do write when things are tough. I know I am very grateful I have my blog as my journal keeping has been pretty horrific.
That’s one of the biggest reasons I blog! I want to capture family history as it’s happening, not always from the historical perspective. Especially in our married lives, my sweetie and I don’t see our history the same way. I’m still itching to have him record some of his memories so at least we have that balance. Maybe someday…if I tell a story completely wrong…hmmmm…
Sandy
This is great. I tend to revel in sorrow and pain. I feel my most poetic and creative when my heart aches so that’s when I write lengthy journal entries.
My happy days are short pathetic entries because I’m too busy LIVING to write.
I’d better get to changin’ these habits or my great-great-grands with think grammy was a pitiful soul!
I’ve had some fun experiences writing “essays” that fill in the gaps in my journal-keeping. Since I got married I’ve been a prolific journaler, never going more than a week without writing a few pages. Before that I was spotty at best.
So, I’ve taken to writing essays that are based on “topics” from my personal history: Recollections on Scouting, on High School, on Seminary, on the Aaronic Priesthood, on family life as a child, on vacations I took, on my undergraduate experience, on freshman year, etc.
My memory is probably clouded a bit but I’ve tried to be honest. I figure, at least there’s something there.
#3 isn’t as tough as it seems. My mother wrote her first volume at age 50, and I took her cue and did the same. It took me then several years to edit into a “final” version, but made quite a nice gift to my children that Christmas.
I’m the opposite, I’ll go long periods of time without writing because I’m just too grumpy about whatever (which is why my blog has been so sparse lately hehe). I do write some of that down cuz I think it’s important to remember but I like to keep it happy since there’s just way too much to be happy about. My high school journals are hilarious since I was in love with a different boy every week 😛
My mom compiled all my letters and pictures from my mission while I was out. I think that would be a great way to document it.