All of us have been in a situation when we completely unintentionally met someone whom we haven’t seen for a while. We have probably exchanged some lines with them, sort of typical smalltalk questions like: How have you been? Where are you now? What are you doing?
There are two possible scenarios of how this unexpected encounter could have finished. In essence, our acquaintance could have offered one of the following verbal wrap ups:
You haven’t changed at all. You are exactly as I remember you.
You have totally changed. I almost didn’t recognize you.
Then we usually part our ways and continue living our lives as usual.
Have you ever stopped and asked yourself how much you have truly changed over that period? How much did you change versus yesterday? Versus last year? Your first job? Versus your university or high school days?
For others it is easier to notice it, especially if they haven’t seen you for a while. What they associate you with is practically an old mental image of you that resides captured in their memory. The older the image, the easier it is for them to spot the differences. And I am not talking solely about appearance.
How about us? How often do we take time to identify how much we have changed?
I intentionally avoid using the word “if” here. It is obvious that we have changed and we continue to change, both mentally and physically, and on our molecular level every second of our lives.
We develop, we evolve.
Some of us are slower, some of us quicker but we inevitably change all the time.
That’s called life.
When and how do we lose track of these changes?
I guess many of us had our own journaling attempts in some phase of our lives. I know I did. Back in my school days, I used to write about my secret wishes, daydreams about the guys I had crush on… typical teenage stuff. Until my older brother found my journal, read it and occasionally started to quote parts of it during our family lunch times.
To prevent it from happening again, in a quite theatrical ritual in the backyard I have burned my journal. Page by page I was watching all the secrets of my young soul turning into a small pile of ash. I have promised to myself that my brother will never again have a chance to take a single peek into my thoughts and dreams. I decided not to write a journal anymore.
What a mistake.
It took me more than two decades to give it a try to write a journal again. I have just started to read Julia Cameron’s book “ The Artist’s Way” and got inspired to start writing my morning pages. A random stream of thoughts captured on a single piece of paper.
It continued till now with less frequent but longer entries. Not exclusively but most of the time written in the mornings.
My writings don’t have any particular structure. I don’t contemplate on the topic or care about the beauty of the storyline. Honestly speaking, I don’t have a clue what I will write about when I take the pen and open the notebook. I simply write and try to transcript flow of my thoughts in that particular moment. And so I have nine notebooks filled with these transcripts by now.
Almost a decade of my life is stored between these pages. I don’t read them but, from time to time, I treat myself by opening a random page and reading the entry. This is the moment when the magic happens. Magic that allows me to meet my old self and wrap up our encounter in one of the two known manners:
You haven’t changed at all.
You have totally changed.
It is at the same time funny and invaluable to have an opportunity to draw back to some of the moments, doubts, events, people in your life without having the privilege to distort the memory by adding a convenient layer of rationalization and storylines that appeal to our ego. Own handwritten words are hard to manipulate. This is me. Then.
There, on the pages of my journal, reside parts of me that allow me to observe myself beyond photos captured with some old Kodak camera or some of the versions of the iPhone. It offers me a chance to track the pace of my evolution as a daughter, sister, friend, colleague, professional, human being.
It is December. Many of you are already drafting your New Year’s resolutions. Are you going to start with the gym? Eat healthier? Maybe you will read more? Perhaps you will quit some of your bad habits?
How about not requesting anything from yourself and simply giving yourself a chance to meet an interesting person that will always be on your side?
Journaling is one of the greatest tools that will help you to befriend that person.
Yourself.
I dare you to start to know thyself.
19.12.2022
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