the importance of memories
Our memories define us. They are, truly, what make us who we are. The present is so fleeting that without our memories we wouldn’t have a character, a life lived, a sense of being.
Every day we experience new situations and people, and by journaling, we have the ability to record these experiences. Our journals ensure these memories will live forever.
Over time, our memories can change. We begin to remember more how we felt on a day rather than what caused us to feel that way. We can forget the order in which things happened. We can slide people into our memories while others slip out.
Journaling gives us the chance to keep our memories whole: writing helps us remember events more clearly, and we have the ability to revisit the event weeks, months, years, and even decades later to remember it with accuracy.
Not journaling may facilitate forgetting details, people, and entire events.
Why does it matter if we remember our experiences at all, let alone with accuracy? Because these experiences are what shape our character, our values, our understanding, and our empathy. These experiences make us who we are.
Memories matter.
We encourage you to begin, if you haven’t already, documenting your day with pen and paper, for your eyes only. It’s as simple as grabbing an 88 cent spiral bound notebook the next time you see one. You can go a step further and begin to print out all of those beautiful pictures you take and keep them in an album or hang them on the wall.
If you’re like us and have more than one journal going, you’ll find that no matter if you’re writing about your health or your garden, whether you’re writing your morning pages or writing about your marriage, all journals have room for you to talk about your unique experiences.
What will happen is you’ll be able to remember what happened last week much more easily, and you’ll have a resource to go back and remember what you were like when you were 21, 25, 30, 36, 40, 48, 55, 63, 78… you get the idea (:
Our adult lives have gotten so busy and multi-faceted that taking twenty minutes to journal about an experience is becoming less and less common. Rather, we’re posting it on social media.
Don’t get us wrong; we like social media and use the various platforms personally and professionally. However, while the ability to document your life online is pretty awesome, ask yourself how honest you are in those posts.
How many different pictures did you take before selecting and filtering the “perfect” one? How many times to did you edit your FB post, or rephrase those 280 characters?
The thing with social media is we are putting it out there for the consumption of other people, and our true experience can get lost in the image we are creating for ourselves.
Write for you and only you, and turn those character-shaping experiences into accurate, detailed memories you can reflect upon forever.
Our memories define us. Write about them, so you remember who you are.
