Does It Take an Eclipse to See Totality?
A journal can unveil all the totality in life…if you give it enough time
Did you watch the solar eclipse last month? Did you read about it after the event? It was hard to avoid it, since people all over the internet seemed to feel compelled to write about their eclipse experiences, especially about how it made them feel.
Something about a radical change in the celestial bodies around us seems to turn our focus to our place in the universe — which seems perfectly natural and appropriate. But this raises a question in my mind:
Why don’t we delve like that every day? Every year? Why does it take a dramatic event like an eclipse to make us focus inward?? Why is focusing inward not taught in school?
In school writing classes, we’re taught to craft our words to convince, to persuade, to critique and give our opinions, to prove or disprove a point — all important skills for business, for politics, for debate. For our communal lives in society. But our self gets completely overlooked in school and most other places — to our great detriment.
In my Thoughtletter of April 15, I wrote about the oldest human advice, found carved on a tomb in ancient Egypt, and often used by Plato and Socrates in ancient Greece: Know thyself.
Some of us cruise through life never bothering to figure this out. That can work, for some of us…but only to a certain point. There will always be gaps in what we perceive and what we can understand about our perceptions, if we don’t fully understand who we are and why we do what we do.
Know thyself. But how best to undertake this all-important research, if it isn’t taught anywhere in our educational experience? Its importance can be highlighted occasionally by a life event, like a death, or an illness, or by a cosmic event, like an eclipse. Moments like those can force us to dwell on the things that make us who we are. That make us human.
How to know yourself? How to understand what makes you, you?
Do you know anyone in therapy? Or maybe you have personal experience with it. A therapist can help you sort out the mysteries that surround us and shape us as we wend our way through life — and a journal just might be the best therapist in the world! It’s free, it’s always accessible, you never need to make an appointment, you can work on whatever you want, whenever you want, anywhere.
There’s no secret to journaling. All you need is a pen and paper, or a keyboard. Some quiet time that you can steal from your frenetic or overwhelming or distracting life. That’s it.
Our brains are always ‘on.’ During the day, we call it thinking. During the night, the random thoughts that flash unfettered through our brain are called dreams. Sometimes we remember them, sometimes we don’t (journaling can help make you better at that). But the brain never stops until we die.
So pick up your pen, or open your computer, sit still in a quiet place, set a timer — five minutes, ten, whatever your life allows — and let your brain do what it does best.
And write down whatever happens.
There will be a lot of drivel, at first. This is your brain flexing its muscles. Just like for any activity, the muscles required need to get into shape in order for the activity to be productive. But the single most important rule — the only rule — is this: Don’t lift your pen or stop writing / typing until the timer sounds.
Let the drivel flow. Know that deep inside it, hidden under the layers of words you didn’t think you needed, are kernels of truth. And eventually you won’t need the timer anymore.
Ever heard of Leonardo da Vinci? Albert Einstein? Marie Curie? They’re among many famous, successful people who kept journals on their way through life.
Research by James Pennebaker (Writing to Heal, 2004) proves that people who write about themselves have better mental health, stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, less pain and sleep better.
Food for thought.
Well said! I started keeping a journal many years ago and should rekindle that habit.