Nearly two years ago I started writing a daily journal (I actually began writing the journal about six months after I started writing this blog.) I titled it, “Writing My Way to Clarity,” and have proceeded to write every day through 11 different books and hundreds, perhaps a few thousand pages. It’s not about writing every day, or a string of unbroken days of doing an activity. It has been about the action of using writing not simply as a form of expression but as a means of processing and distilling thoughts, ideas, plans, and strategies. It really has allowed me to clarify various things in my life in ways no other medium could. I continue to be grateful for the written word and how it has afforded me many opportunities to get to the heart of the matter irrespective of what that matter was.
During the difficulties that I faced a few years ago, I was in therapy on a bi-weekly and sometimes weekly basis. And while the opportunity to share the challenges that confronted me and receive feedback and guidance from a professional was very helpful, processing my thoughts and feelings through writing, and in particular expressing my gratitude for the many positive things that were happening all around me in the midst of the drama, significantly helped my healing process. I discovered as I looked through various entries in that first journal (begun in October 2011, but began as a daily practice on January 25, 2012) that I really have been writing my way our of foggy and uncompromising uncertainty toward a clearer sense of where I want to go, what I want to do, and some things that need to happen to get me there. Only within the past few months have I reached a point of clarity on a topic or two that I have been grappling with, struggling through for a number of years. I still don’t have absolute clarity on the particulars of what I’m discovering means or exactly how to “get there, ” but I’m much, much clearer on the what.
One of my teachers said to me, “Never let the ‘how’ get in the way of a good what.” His point was that it was important first to determine what we want to do, have, be without focusing on the “how” of going about getting it. We spend too much time focusing on how something is going to happen without first getting really clear about what it is we want to happen. Writing my way to clarity has been a way for me to begin defining the what. I strongly recommend it. I am grateful for all the words that have found their way into my journal over these two years, as well as the gratitude that has been expressed in this blog over roughly that same period. It has been and continues to be a blessing. For the power of the written word to clarify and express a number of important ideas and themes and for the opportunity to share these ideas with others I am most definitely grateful.
