Journals

Ever since I was a little girl, I've had an obsession with collecting empty notebooks and journals. I'd always imagine myself buying one, filling it with all my hopes and dreams then packing it away to read on a rainy day ten years from now, whether that reading was done by me or maybe my future children who happen to chance upon a box of forgotten but cherished things.

I think that if I write in a journal, I'll think too much about it, like how I think too much about everything I do. Because I want it to be honest, yet readable not only for myself but for my children later in the future who I hope will find it. I would want them to know that everything they're going through has been "gone through" before by thousands of generations before them.I would feel cheap writing to an audience even though it's supposed to be a private matter, but I can't help but think that whatever I would want to write down in the pages of forever would be readable. I guess it follows the type of "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all" exercise. Once you write something down, it's your opinion made. Permanent and unable to be taken back, written language is official, because it can't be denied and suppressed like inner thoughts and opinions. I suppose that's why written language can be one of the greatest weapons in person's sort of metaphysical arsenal.


Journals should be more than just your daily happenings and events, like a Xanga blog or a transcript of what you tell your BFF on the phone late at night. It's more than just an itinerary. It should be a record of your philosophy on life. What you think, why you think it, and whether the people you hang out with think the same way. And since your philosophies are put in context of your then-current routine lifestyle, you can look back at any entry and see what kind of person you were existing as at that point in time. And I think that's important. Journals are recorded in real time, too. So the writing is raw and real and without the filter of a 'jaded' existence. It's important to see where you've come from, where you are right now, and see the progression (or maybe regression) in getting there.

The measure of a human life is progress. Journals record that. Why do you think it's so hard to read through Xanga entries or recount the memories of middle school with old friends? Because you've realized what you used to be compared to who you are now. If a man wrote an entry for every day of his life, and read this on his deathbed, he should feel proud of himself and satisfied. That's my philosophy on life.

When I have enough money one day, I'll go out to a bookstore and buy the perfect journal. It'd be leatherbound and soft. The margins would be just perfect, and bound in a way that I wouldn't have to struggle making it lay flat. It would pay for itself through sentimental interest rates, because the longer I keep it and keep writing in it, the more it'll be worth to me, for I hold sentimental value much more above monetary 8 days a week.

And then the curiosity will take the best of my future child, who will one day wander into the garage to look through the loads of unmarked boxes, and spend his entire afternoon reading about how strange yet familiar his mom sounded during her college years. And because of a decision his mom made years ago, he would forever continue to look at her with just another small yet significant dimension that wouldn't have been there before.