*NOTE: This blog post was written a week before it was published, so this does not carry any oblique references to any broad current events.
I use a journal as a place to write musings, ideas, notes to myself, or just a scratchpad. I’ve been using the same notebook for almost 2 years now so the early pages are an interesting look back in time.
I started reading back at the beginning of the journal, to see what old thoughts I might have had that are still percolating, or ones that were in my head but I never pursued, in case there were any gems left behind.
Instead what I discovered was a cliché question with an important implication:
Will I even remember this a year from now?
In one of my journal entries, I wrote about frustration and anger with a person in my life. Since I don’t journal for anyone else’s benefit, I don’t necessarily explain a current situation in my writing, so when I read this (without the context of it being the present moment), I couldn’t even remember this person I wrote about. I have no idea who this person is or was or even their relationship to me.
How important could that moment or experience have been if I can’t even remember the situation or this person a year later??
It was a glaring reminder that the things that make us feel all up in arms, twisted up inside, or downright outwardly upset may not even be important enough to recall a year later.
This surprising reminder gave me another tool for my emotional toolbelt: a prompt, a question, in troubling moment: does this hold a place in the grand scheme of my life?
