Journaling: Open Book or Selective Sharing?

 

When I decided to go back to journaling – a habit I abandoned since I couldn’t keep up with it on a daily basis – I pondered whether or not I should be careful about what to write in my journal. Then I decided that maybe it’s just better to put EVERYTHING into my journal – every thought, idea, dream, things that happen, etc. One constant I have noticed about my life is that people always, ALWAYS get the wrong ideas about me. They ALWAYS assume the wrong things, jump to the wrong conclusions and think they have me ALL FIGURED OUT when they are not even close. So, yes, I decided that I WILL put everything into my journal. There will be no holds barred. Everything that happens and what people say will go into my journal.

 

But at the same time, one can’t help but wonder how people reading the journal later on, long after I am dead, will react to it or what they’ll think about the kind of person that I was.

 

I recently read an editorial in which the author struggled with what to put into her journal. She was not sure if what she wrote in her journal would give people the right idea about the kind of person that she was when she was alive. This is something I have related to. Even when I put everything into my journal, I still wonder: Will anyone who reads it (IF anyone reads it!!) get the right idea about the kind of person that I was? Will I be able to capture who I am accurately in my journal for the reader who does not know me at all?

 

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that this is basically something that we really don’t have any control over. People are going to think what they want to think – even if what they think is not the truth, but it fits with THEIR truth so they believe it is THE truth. People are going to tell themselves whatever they want to tell themselves, truth be damned! People like to cling to their fantasies no matter how contrary they are to REALITY so no matter what is said or how wrong they are proven, they will continue to cling to that fantasy. They don’t want to know the truth; the lie is too much of a comfort zone for them. They are afraid to face, let alone accept, what is true.

 

So, really, we don’t have any control over what people will think about us from what they read in our journals. This is entirely out of our hands.

 

All we can do is write the truth – the truth of what REALLY happens. What happens as it is happening now, in this point in time.

 

For this reason, I will continue to share everything in my journal. And I do mean EVERYTHING: I will bare my thoughts, feelings, experiences, dreams and ideas in all their glory. Even if someone decides that what I wrote is false, even if it isn’t, I am at least staying true to myself and writing honestly about everything. They are all a part of my story, and they ALL deserve to be told with as much accuracy, honesty and thoroughness as I can give to them.