“A good memory is no match for a
bad pen nib.”
‘The palest ink is more reliable than the most powerful memory.’[1]
In my daily work, many times people
will come to me and ask; “what can I do to change x?” as if in the course of 45
mi
nutes life could be solved and reshaped. The reality is that life takes time
to be reshaped, and issues take attention and effort to be resolved. So, drawing
from the above popular proverb, I always invite people to start keeping a
journal. At first they are surprised and, in a way reluctant to do it. This is
usually because they are concerned about the safety of their thoughts or the
time it will take for them to do it. That, however, is the point! They will
express their reluctance, my reply will be “if you want to know what you can do
to change, you have to be aware of what you are doing, and you have to be able
to review and see what you have done during a day, a week, a month.” The problem
here is that people expect solutions without effort, but our lives require time
and effort in order to be fulfilled. So it is no wonder that we are reluctant
to sit down and spend some time putting our thoughts together and feeling
uncomfortable when we see what we desire to make better. Therefore, we have to
be able to understand that if we want to have the chance to review our life, it
will be helpful to keep track of what we are doing or at least the most
important events, feelings, happenings of our life… and writing them down is a
pretty good exercise to do so. Writing them will help you to:
- Clarify your thoughts: once the day is over you will be looking in retrospective and, probably, with the same intensity of feelings, passion, anger or joy at what happened during the day. However, you will be able to record them in a calmer way.
- Relax: whenever you are in a situation of anger for example, you can see how the first pen strokes can be in disarray and indented on the paper, and how as you keep writing they become more ordered and light.
- Think what is next: you can write what just happened and what you would like to happen in the future. Maybe after some days you may revisit that page and totally change your mind, but at least you can see the progression of your feelings.
So, it does not matter what you
write, start writing and it will help you to understand its purpose!
Thank you for the inspiration, father alex. I agree with you po 100%. Just the other day, I've been suggesting this (keeping a journal) to a friend who wants change in her life po. Missin' you a lot here
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