A pleasant surprise today, as while I sat down to start writing in the couple hours before the ski lesson starts, a colleague sat down next to me with a notepad and a pen and started getting to write too. I asked if he is journaling and indeed he is.
The last time he made an entry, was over two years ago.
He travels a lot for work and what he has done since he started is every trip, he write his thoughts out to his son and at some point, he will give it to him as a reminder of - this is where I was those times. It is sweet and I believe it has value.
I have written about how I do similar as well, except mine is on the blockchain, which is likely safer than keeping a hardcopy journal - for me at least. It is obvious that I don't write daily letters to my daughter, but there is so much of "me" and our lives in these daily pieces that I think that when she is old enough, she will be able to get a sense of what kind of person I was at different periods of my life, without hearing it from my biased self in the future, or in the possibility of me not being around at all.
How I see it is that if I were to pass, people would tell her about how I was from their perspective, but that is also going to be tainted by time and opinion, which can change markedly over longer periods of time. These kinds of articles however, are a snapshot of me "alone" from a near immediate thought process of how I am at that moment. And, there are also the 50,000+ comments that go along with the 5000+ top level posts, to support my perspective and momentary understanding.
Hive has become like a continually filling time capsule of my life over the last years and includes all kinds of information that surrounds my life, those I interact with and a whole range of loves and perhaps most importantly, fears that I have. Among the millions of words committed to this chain, are some of the biggest highlights, lows and scariest periods of my life and I believe that perhaps 10 or 15 years from now, my daughter will find value and perhaps comfort amongst them.
While it is a morbid thought for many, I am always considering that I might be checked-out of life at any time and that through these words I have a chance to build a legacy of a kind, where no matter what happens, my daughter will know at least one half of her background, from an outsider in her life, looking in. In so doing, I hope that she will grow to have a better understanding of herself and will be able to use that to find strength in ways and when she needs.
I feel that the future generations are going to face some difficult challenges and will need to make some very hard decisions that will directly affect their quality of lives, and I think that "knowing" a little of their past will help them not only make better decisions, but also create resilience in the face of adversity. All of our lives are stories, but even though we each live them as individuals directly, a lot of what we do is blind to us, making the pages of our personal journey torn, filled with holes or ripped out completely.
When large and possibly important parts of us are missing, it can be hard to build our own direction in a way that is best suited to who we are, and who "I is". When our narrative is filled and influenced by the opinions and decisions of others, we can live our life, hitting targets, fulfilling desires, yet never get the sense of true contentment. We can be "successful" and still utterly fail to live a good life for ourselves.
When we are living an unaware inauthentic life, we are also unknowingly building inauthentic relationships also, which can leave us feeling damaged, when they inevitably fail to meet our needs. We can blame the "other" for our outcomes, but we have to acknowledge that we make the choice of who is in our lives and it is us who place our expectations upon them. If they fail to meet our needs, it is not their fault - it is ours.
It all comes down to the decisions we make and life is a flow of sliding doors. One word can fundamentally change our direction, so can one smile, or one frown, but it is impossible to predict precisely how this is going to impact on us - pain us or heal us - for better or worse. Living life is easy and it is even easier to live unaware, detached, blind to the role we play. It is harder to live the aware life in so many ways, as it takes a mass more energy, but at the same time, the decisions we make become more our own. We have agency.
And I hope that out of all the things that I might write about at any given moment, that is what my daughter takes away from this - that despite all of the stuff that is out of our control, from our genetics to our environment, we can make a decision on how we frame our lives and place in it. We can live a life worth living, even if we are the only ones content to live that life.
Ultimately, we are alone in this world.
But, we never have to be lonely.
There is value in directed thought, there is value in observing free thought too. Is there value in capturing, bottling it, storing it for others and my future self to reflect upon?
We'll see.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
