Simple Suggestion #242... Reread an old journal

I haven't been moodling as much as usual lately because I've been rereading the books of my life. They inhabit two heavy banker boxes on a shelf in our basement.

What brought this on? My girls and I were chatting about letter writing, and I mentioned how one of the first letters from their father threw me for a loop.

"Dad wrote you letters?!" They couldn't imagine their dad writing to me, I guess. So I went down to my boxes and pulled out the duotang that holds the story of my beginnings with Lee, including many letters we wrote back and forth (we lived 100 km apart at that time).

I read them the threw-me-for-a-loop letter, about Lee's conversation with God on a golf course, how he told God he'd like to find "someone special," but that he probably couldn't expect someone to just come up to him and say, "I've been looking for you." And guess what happened? If you guessed that when he got back to the clubhouse I was standing there saying those exact words, well, I don't have to tell you the rest of the story. My girls ate it up, of course! And I got lost in the rest of the book, rereading our whirlwind romance and early life together.

It was so much fun to look back to the time when I didn't know the love of my life -- when we were feeling our way into friendship and courtship and permanent relationship. Some pages are downright embarrassing and should probably be burned, but others fill me with a deep delight, especially since I know how happily the story continued.

Those two banker boxes hold all sorts of journalled treasures dating from the time I was 14. They tell stories of a younger me, my ups and downs and in-betweens, as well as stories of friendships made and lost, my first years of teaching, and our daughters' growing up. When I was younger, I found it hard to reread my life, probably because I wasn't proud of the painful, hurtful, embarrassing, less-than-charitable moments in my past, but now that I've reached a certain age, I see how all those moments have made me into a person at whom I laugh a lot, and love most days.

The books of my life bring back long forgotten events... like hanging out with summer camp friends, a wonderful camping trip with my sisters, a long phone chat with a faraway friend, a moment of pure anger with the parent of one of my students, the ever deepening love for my husband, the incredible joy as I held my newborn babes, and the struggles and joys of parenting, all of it written as I tried to sort out my heart and life.

I know that not everyone journals the way I have, but most people at least try it once or twice. So today's simple suggestion is to dig out that old diary or notebook -- or computer file? -- and remember who you were at another time in your life. If you are able, offer that person of the past your blessing and love from the present.

For more Simple Suggestions, click here.

Becoming someone

I used to be one of those people who loved personality quizzes, was into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Enneagram (I have three books on it) and was pretty much magnetized to the psychology/self help section in any bookstore. I was determined to self-improve, to become MORE than I was, to show the world... that I was something special.

But somewhere along the way, I acquired a friend who made fun of my reading, calling it "psychobabble" and "navel-gazing." Then Oprah came along, and the sort of self-helpy things she offered on TV, her professional "experts" who often seemed to turn out to be frauds, and her wacky guests with all the weird problems turned me off even further. Self-help was taking a strange road, and I decided to avoid it.

I guess you could say I developed an aversion to the self-help business, because that's all it suddenly seemed to be. A business, selling stuff. Did all those people, flogging all those books, really care about anything other than the fame and fortune their theories would bring them? The more I read or watched, the less I believed in their visions of who I could become if I followed their suggestions. Soon I began to laugh at the titles of the books on the shelves in the psychology section. Puh-lease!

But recently, I picked up an Enneagram book and looked at it again. It really wasn't so bad; in fact, it reminded me of a few good things that I need to do for myself -- and the people who have to put up with me. I came across my Myers-Briggs test in an old journal, along with the suggestions that came from it -- and they still hold true. So I keep working on my tendencies to procrastinate and not finish what I sta--. And I saw Oprah in The Color Purple, (a wonderful film) and remembered that I liked her acting (and some of her book club recommendations).

Then yesterday, I came upon this video, and laughed delightedly as I recognized the melody, played by "the fabulous Stephane Wrembel." "All of me, why not take alllllll of me?" It showed me how those mostly abandoned self-help books have had their place in the making of me, in my journey of self-discovery. As have many events, courses, places, and people (a few of them, FOOLS). The thing that I've recognized is that, even before I read those books or had those experiences, I was already ENOUGH, and that I am even moreso now through the things I have learned about myself -- and others -- from books, events, courses, places and people who have played their parts in the shaping of all of me. I may not be a rich or famous someone, but honestly, I wouldn't trade my life with any of the rich and famous lives out there! And I know that navel gazing isn't nearly as important as being involved in life.

Who and what has shaped you into the SOMEONE you are? Today, breathe a little thankyou to them and celebrate your journey. And if you like, enjoy this little video as part of that celebration. Cheers!