I’ve been keeping a diary for a long time—since I was eight years old. And being a writer, the pages have piled up over the years. I’ve kept diaries for my feelings, my daily events, my ideas, my spiritual journey, nearly everything you can think of. And until recently you could find it all on my bookshelf. But why?
My old dream
I remember back a few years ago I fantasized about the day I was old. I would have a whole “bookshelf of me”. Every diary on it going back to when I was literally a child, and whenever I wanted to recall my youth I could just turn back through the pages and there it would be, memorialized in pencil and pen. Maybe someday my children would want to read about my life, and they could do so. I’ve been writing my autobiography as I go.
But recently, something’s changed in me. And I’ve been destroying all my diaries.
The benefit of journaling
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against journaling. Actually, it’s great. It helps you process your feelings about life’s happenings and lets you get your priorities straight so you can live a more intentional life. (You can read the post I’ve written about journaling here.) And I haven’t stopped keeping a journal. I still write almost every day. But now I’m shredding all my old words with my bare hands. I’m watching all of the bits of paper pile up and inhabit my recycling bin over and over again, and I’m not sad.
Moving forward
It’s funny, but the amount of weight carrying them around isn’t comparable to the amount of lightness that I feel letting them go. I realized that they’re not just words on pages. They’re thoughts and feelings and memories. In fact, they’re remnants of—and sometimes a whole—identity.
I’ve been going through each year, from one city and home to the next carrying around these ideas, these names of people who hurt me, these fears and predictions of futures come and gone. And while I’ve been preaching that you don’t have to be true to your old self to be loving to yourself today, I’ve felt a sort of obligation to my past self to carry these pages with me through life. To honor who I was, to look back on it.
But that’s just not right. Why should I have to keep these identities that didn’t serve me in the past? Why should I have to look back on my heartaches and triumphs when I could be looking ahead of me and letting things get further away the way life is meant to be? I decided to let it all go. To accept that I don’t need to process all of my past hurts anymore. To accept that they don’t have to come with me into tomorrow.
The destruction
While shredding my old pages, I found I would get wrapped up in something I wrote long ago—even if I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. The truth is, I think a lot of things are like that. I get obsessed with figuring things out like a detective, pretending that if I can just figure out exactly what I did wrong, or when I could have seen it coming that they were bad news, then I can keep myself safe from hurt and harm in the future. I think that if I just pick my past self apart enough I’ll have the answers for the test tomorrow. But that’s a just a lie at some point.
Self reflection is important and all. Don’t they always say that the unexamined life is not worth living? But I’ve ruminated on my past long enough, like a cow chewing my cud until there’s no flavor left. I think I’ve surpassed what even my four stomachs can handle of digesting who and what and where I used to be.
It feels scary, letting go. (Read this post if you’re looking for further discussion about letting go.) But I’m starting to accept that it’s okay to forget. I believe now that it’s safe to move on. In fact, it’s probably safer than remembering every little detail of the past wounds, expecting them to apply today.
Acceptance
I think one of the biggest blessings in life is how wrong you can be. For years, I thought that keeping my diaries around would somehow make everything make sense someday, when I’m older and wiser. I thought that I could carry around my past in order to free myself from it.
But today, I’ve realized something. Sometimes life doesn’t leave you clues. And sometimes it’s better to just throw out the whole puzzle because there are so many missing pieces and it’s not even a pretty picture. Go out to the store and buy a new puzzle. And let yourself enjoy that puzzle with the sunset or pretty flowers or cute puppies.
It’s okay to let go. It’s okay to never understand why you were hurt in the past because guess what, it might not even have been about you in the first place. In fact, it probably wasn’t. It’s okay not to take your diaries with you to your next home. I hope reading these words helps give you the encouragement you needed to let go of what is weighing you down. Have a great day.
