I was born in 1945. I tried writing a diary when I was 7 and then again when I was 10. I thought it was what girls did but I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I was too busy living to reflect on what was happening or why. But by halfway through my 15th year the questioning had started in ernest. I’m sure I talked things over with my friends but that wasn’t enough. I know my mother wanted access to my inner life. We spent hours discussing current events, whether either of us would be able to shoot a neighbor breaking into our bomb shelter (actually, we didn’t have one), what had happened to our “beautiful relationship” (the one we had when I was a child who worshipped her and didn’t question her decisions), the meaning of life in general. By 15, sharing my inner life with my mother had begun to feel invasive. Besides, I already knew what she thought and I wanted more. So I got an extra spiral-bound notebook and began sharing with myself.
Today, June 1, 2019 (It happens to be my mother’s birthday, or would be if she was still alive) I’m going to begin Journaling 2.0 – Reflections on Reflections. I’ve kept all those old notebooks. Each time I return to them I’m amazed at how little I’ve changed. That doesn’t mean there’s been no change, but it’s clear that, at age 74, I’m the same person with many of the same unanswered questions. As you’ll see on the next page, I began with the sentence:
“Possibly if I write down my thoughts, the one’s worth thinking will not be forgotten.”
The years have taught me at least two things. First, that writing down thoughts in a private journal will not preserve them. I will die, the notebook is likely to be thrown out unread, my memory will go with me. That’s forgetting. But if I share what I’ve written, publish it, there’s some chance the wish embedded in my sentence could come true.
Second, there’s no a priori way to judge which thoughts will have value, “be worth thinking”, beyond the simple joy of having them. There’s a kind of natural selection for ideas as well as genes that happens over time. Genes are lost by being bred out of the gene pool. Thoughts just get forgotten. Publishing thoughts may be like the strategy in nature of an individual laying 10,000 eggs each season even though only 2 or 3 of them are likely to survive to produce the next generation. Perhaps I can push this metaphor a little further. Most of those eggs get eaten by other species. Their specific genes are digested, destroyed, not passed on. Still, the eggs have served a purpose. They have nurtured someone else. Maybe thoughts really are like eggs…
My juvenile notes are interesting to me, in part because I can compare them to what I think now as I read them. I’ve chosen a strategy make them interesting to you by adding my “mature” reaction to each journal entry. You might want to do the same and pass the result on.
One more lesson I hadn’t learned at 15. There’s a certain value in simply amusing each other. My mother used to repeat, “Fools names and fools faces are always found in public places.” I interpreted this to mean I shouldn’t carve my initials in tree trunks or paint them on mountain tops. Those who did were fools. I also believed, on a deeper level, that I shouldn’t talk about myself. So I kept this journal secret. Experience has taught me otherwise. People enjoy stories, the more personal the better. So, dear reader, even if you find no profound ideas in the words that follow, I hope you enjoy the story.
