Why Should You Keep a Diary?

Do you ever feel like your life is whizzing by you to little consequence? Do you ever feel like you can’t even remember what you did last weekend let alone last year? Do you every worry that your life is moving along – and that nobody, not even you, is really noticing?

I picture myself at the end of my life, living at an assisted living home or with one of my yet-to-be-born adult children, and long after the talking heads and soap operas on television have lost their allure, I picture myself in the emptiness of those moments. What I would most like to remember and reflect on in those hours – in that final twilight of my life – is how much fun I had, who mattered to me and why. I want to remember all the things I did and places I went – I want to feel that my life mattered.

Enter the diary or journal - a great way to keep track of your life now at the midsummer of your life. It’s a terrific way to record the little occasions, the anniversaries, the weddings and the kids’ birthday parties.

Diaries are a terrific way to record today the things that will matter to you tomorrow as you look back and reflect on the special moments that have been part of your unique and special life.

Diaries and journals across the ages have been used for various purposes from simply recording what happened over the course of a day to a form of therapy where people write their deeper reflections on their spirituality, marriage, family relationships, job aspirations and so on.

Personal journals or diaries have played important roles in human existence from the earliest days of recorded history. The earliest record of personal diaries date back over two thousand years - the pillowbooks of Japanese court ladies and Asian travel journals are some of the earliest surviving examples of this kind of writing. The 9th century scholar Li Ao, for example, kept a diary of his journey through southern China. In more modern times, Lewis and Clark kept a detailed account of their travels across the United States and Charles Darwin’s “Beagle Diary” recounts his travels over the course of 5 years around the world. And of course, I would be remiss not to mention the bestselling and ever-popular “Diary of Anne Frank” – the diary of a young Jewish girl whose family was forced to hide from the Nazis in the attic of an Amsterdam apartment.

These important works and many others like them have taught us a great deal about the experiences and struggles of a variety of people across the ages but a personal diary doesn’t – and shouldn’t – speak to a future generation or an entire society. The greatest value a diary can offer is what it offers to us personally. For more the most important legacy we leave behind is the legacy we leave for ourselves.

Over the months and years, the endless parade of activities, events, parties, conversations, vacations, and news both national and personal can quickly become overwhelming. As such, we really need one place where we can keep track of it all and simultaneously process how we feel about it at the same time. We all need a place to record the significant – and mundane – happenings in our life so that when we look back in one, ten or fifty years, in the haze of our later years, we will have some comfort in knowing that it all did really happen. And that it was amazing.