My bookshelf houses my Bible, Heritage readers, AP stylebook, and many, many notebooks. Some are wrinkled and worn — full of writing, drawings, and pasted-in pictures. Others remain pristine and empty. Both filling these blank pages with my thoughts and knowing they will survive my fleeting existence make me feel human.
“I never travel without my diary,” said Oscar Wilde, the 19th-century playwright. “One should always have something sensational to read.”
Since fifth grade, I’ve adhered to this advice, carrying a notebook with me almost everywhere. Despite the taunts of a classmate in sixth grade algebra and the skeptical leaning toward judgmental looks some give me when they think I’m “writing in a diary,” I cherish my journals.
I don’t sit down every night and write down a play-by-play of my day, but instead I record meaningful moments: witty jokes, insightful conversations, and new observations. Sometimes I write two sentences and others times 10 pages.
The pages contain painful memories, like the last time I saw one of my sisters and she announced she doesn’t believe in God anymore. But they also recall exciting realizations, like the time I was driving through the New Mexican desert and felt God say I needed to attend Hillsdale College instead of the university to which I’d already committed.
While I remember both of these days vividly without the entries’ help, every time I re-read them, I learn new lessons from seeing how I felt about the situation at the moment compares to how I view it now as an older and (hopefully) wiser individual.
In addition to helping my brain organize my thoughts and ideas, journaling fosters imagination.
Sitting down beside Lake Baw Beese with my pen and leather-bound journal makes me look at everything through a different set of eyes. I don’t just see, but I observe and appreciate. Then by writing about the beauty surrounding me, I see how it relates to a particular event. In addition to synthesizing feelings about what already fills my head, writing causes me to think thoughts I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Simply, journaling is a form of contemplation.
In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says this — rational contemplation — is the highest good, and this activity should be pursued above all others.
While I’m far too busy to follow his advice and make journaling and contemplation my main activity, I understand why he says this because I find myself far more capable of handling a stressful day when I make time to write.
By taking time to be both more introspective of myself and observant of my surroundings, I no longer am just mindlessly racing around to meetings, classes, and coffee dates. Contemplating illuminates the purpose of all other activities and gives them meaning.
Recently, my friend’s laptop was stolen. Immediately after finding out, my mind filled with fear of what could happen had l lost my computer. All of the papers, articles, pictures, poems, and music. Gone.
I then started to think of solutions to circumvent such a fate. I could download everything to Dropbox. I actually did do this until my free “trial” version announced it was full and I couldn’t store anything more. Obviously, I’m a poor college student without expendable cash, so I didn’t buy the premium version.
Next, I considered transferring all my files to Google Drive. Even though Google is a mega-company and I don’t foresee its demise soon, I worried that even it has its malfunctions and I could lose all my most precious documents. I also considered backing up everything to an external hard drive, but that could so easily be misplaced or destroyed.
Terrified, I realized how easily a large part of my life could disappear.
Yet, seeing the weathered journals filling my bookcase comforted me, because a click of a button or technical malfunction can’t erase them. Exempting fire and thievery, these notebooks encompassing my moments of strife, elation, and quandaries will always exist.
While I doubt anyone will care in fifty years about my epiphany from watching the golden Maple leaves fall outside my bedroom window, a record of me living, thinking, learning, and contemplating exists aside from Facebook posts and Instagram photos.
While web sites can be deleted and external hard drives lost, my journals will survive to tell the human story of Macaela Joy Bennett.
Macaela Bennett is a junior majoring in American studies. She is a member of the Dow Journalism Program and the editor of the Collegian’s City News page.
