Look Within, With Journaling

On September 3rd, 2020, I had Chinese food and I was thinking about whether or not I should text back a girl that I had a pseudo-crush on for a considerable amount of time. A couple of months before that, on July 15, I had my second haircut after going blonde; I was not digging my look so much. On November 1st, 2020, I had a dream that I was back in my high school prom dancing with my best friends and came across a dinosaur carcass on the dance floor.

Why am I telling you this? And who cares about these details of my life? Well, I am telling you this to demonstrate just one of the many wonders of journaling, remembering. And I care about these details, which is why I journal.

There is a saying that I heard from my aunt once that really motivated me to begin journaling about my day and about my dreams. “Recordar es volver a vivir” (To remember is to live again), she said. Looking back at these journal entries that I wrote over the past couple of years allows me to not only remember what I was doing the day or how I was feeling, it really does open up a sort-of portal into the past where I can revisit specific details and moments of my life. I think that nowadays we all live life a bit too quickly. Why not stroll through the days, taking in as much detail as you can, as opposed to going through the days with our heads stuck to our screens in that weird sort-of-running-but-sort-walking limbo that you experience when somebody opens a door for you but you’re still a bit far.

Though time does indeed pass and we will forget the majority of our days’ details, journaling once a day about how the day is going, or the emotions you felt throughout, allows for a look back into the past when it is time to read the entries in the future. Though there may be quicker and less demanding forms of remembering details about your day, I believe that putting your thoughts into actual words allows for a more introspective view of how the day, and life, are going.

Another reason that I think people should journal is to remember and analyze the dreams that they may have throughout the night. The literature on dreams is very extensive, to sum it up, nobody really knows what is going on. There are schools of thought that believe that dreams are the work of random neurons firing in our brain, and there are other conflicting theories stating that dreams are the work of the unconscious mind attempting to restore balance in the psyche and communicate important things to the individual.

Though I may be a bit biased toward the latter explanation of dreams (due in large part to my fascination with Carl Jung and his dream-analysis literature), I am sure that some people can relate to the feeling that arises when you have a ‘random’ dream that made sense and clicked as soon as you wake up. Carl Jung was also a proponent of writing down your dreams in order to study them.

Just imagine if Carl Jung (and many other psychologists) are correct in assuming that dreams are the product of our unconscious mind trying to make sense of life itself in a way that is unlike anything else. Wouldn’t you want to be in touch with that side of yourself? That side of us, the unconscious side, that you literally cannot access in our regular awakened state manifests dreams that sometimes feel as real as life itself. If we want to truly understand who each of us actually “is,” I think that being in touch with our unconscious side through the form of dream journaling allows for us to at least begin to have a relationship with the unknown dimensions of ourselves.

Journaling does not only allow for internal deliberation over unconscious ideas. It allows for somebody to really think. Thoughts are sudden, disappearing, and sometimes very elusive. Writing these down provides a manner for us to further concretize what is going on in our own minds. Journaling allows for ideas to develop that would otherwise be too complex. Journaling makes us better writers, for sure, but it also makes us better formulizers and better thinkers in general.

Without a doubt, there are a plethora of reasons why you should journal. It does not have to be robust. It does not have to be about something that you do not want to talk about (though it may be helpful to do so.) It does not have to be about anything in particular at all.

Journaling about the day you are having and about the dreams that you have allows for a greater understanding of ourselves and our greater lives in general. It is easy to go through a day without noting anything in particular, but the time we have now is the most precious thing that is possible to have. So why not save some memories for the future? Why not make an attempt at understanding our unconscious minds?

People more brilliant than me have advocated for it, people smarter than I have studied it, but I can talk from personal experience and say that even writing a few details a day will build up to a sort-of time machine that will allow you to look back at details in your life that would have otherwise disappeared with the rest of the past.

Your future self will thank you for giving it so many memories, and your present self will thank you for becoming more whole with the rest of your psyche. Do it, just do it, write.