Journaling is an ancient activity. People have been doing it for centuries, yet nowadays, probably less than a percent of the human population does.
If I had a teenage daughter, and I told her, “Hey, Suzy, I want you to start journaling your thoughts and feelings,” she would look at me like I’m insane.
“Hell no, Dad. Give me back my iPad so I can play Candy Crush.”
The idea is terrifying. We’ve been taught unconsciously to avoid such a thing at a young age for whatever reason.
I first started journaling in my early twenties when my psychiatrist/therapist told me to write a page of my thoughts and feelings and bring it into my next session for those things to discuss, back when a psychiatrist and a therapist were one person. Now, a psychiatrist doesn’t want to deal with his patients’ feelings but rather just sit with them for ten minutes and ask if they’re experiencing any side effects before they adjust their medications and send them on their not-so-merry way. A therapist would need to talk with them for the allotted fifty minutes instead, which is a failing endeavor in the modern world. It has been years since I’ve paid anyone who’s any good. But that’s a subject for another day.
So I drove to the Santa Monica pier, hundreds of miles from my parents’ house, where I lived at the time, just to keep my thoughts and feelings as far away from them as possible. What I wrote was so morbid that I kept looking over my shoulder in case any beachgoers could see. I may have somehow gotten in trouble. But afterward, when I was done, the activity was deeply rewarding.
Once in a while, I’ll enter a coffee shop and notice a young woman with a pen in hand scribbling in her fancy little notebook, completely focused on her journal, and a tear will almost fall from my eye. It’s like that commercial from the seventies where the Native American was walking down the highway. A colonist’s descendant threw his trash out the window of his moving vehicle right at the Native American’s feet. Except these are tears of joy. Wow. A person is actually journaling.
It’s a therapeutic practice that occupies our minds from the fear of death, just like washing the dishes or hoeing the garden, like what we see in those prescription drug ads where people are overzealously flying a kite with their irritable bowel. They make me want to take the drug.
Anyway, I remember reading another how-to book for writers back when I read dozens of those books that preyed on a young writer’s insecurities. This one was by someone who wrote science fiction. One of the first rules was to throw the journal away because journaling was useless and rather to focus on the project at hand. I thought his advice was an insult. What’s the problem with journaling? Yes, most of it is garbage a writer would throw away. After all, Hemingway once wrote something to the effect that the first draft of anything is shit. But sometimes, a gem of a sentence is buried somewhere in the trash.
I started journaling routinely after reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. She suggested morning pages, which are three pages of journaling every morning. Writing is a practice but also therapy, like an activity of any other, unless we’re actually writing about our fear of death, in which case we’re dealing with it head-on and making it less threatening on paper.
I think everyone should journal. It feels as if young people are taught to avoid thoughts and feelings and be good little worker bees. The activity no longer scares me after doing it for so long. I’m not in the mood most mornings, but I force myself to do the lifting before doing anything else, like physical exercise. Anyone who does it for the first time might be full of trepidation. That’s okay. Their thoughts are so raw that they’re brave enough to write them on paper. I’m not saying it’s mandatory, but it’s useful. Writing longhand instead of typing is even better. Drawing each letter is comparable to drawing a picture in that it further connects the mind.
Some have argued that writing isn’t therapy at all, with which I strongly disagree. I don’t care what the person writes. It could be a textbook on kinesiology. The subtle act is enough to distract his mind from the fear of death. No matter what we worry about, it all comes down to that basic fear. Aren’t we all just sitting in the waiting room anyway, biding time before it calls our names?
