Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

The true nature of a person, and of people in general, is hidden to us. It shapes and molds our society and views on life and ourselves without anyone having the slightest cognizance of its existence. Yet it continues to exist and affect us, for it is who we are. Once in a rare while, however, one person or another is allowed, by the wiles of chance and circumstance, to glimpse a piece of their own nature. This story is about how I did exactly that.

I spent one year in Mt. Ida college, in Massachusetts. One incredibly boring year in which I studied electric engineering. Now, don't get me wrong, the classes were fun and exciting. I recall with relish the fiascoes that would frequently take place when one person or another wired a short circuit into their projects and attempted to test it by applying power to it. What comes most readily to mind is several people fleeing the makeshift cubicle as a firey spark leapt three feet from the breaker box. But, I digress, back to the topic.
Why I mention the college and the boredom is because of a teacher and a class I had. The class taught people study skills and also methods of being creative. This was a very easy class for me. The teacher gave me something more valuable.
There was an assignment to create the first part of a book of some sort in which would be placed several writing projects for the class. Confused as to the nature of this book, I saw the teacher after class and discussed the matter. Her and my ideas were thrown back and forth, and what came from it was the idea of a journal. From that point on, during the rest of the year I was in college and beyond, I would use the journal to hold thoughts, ideas, observations, emotions, ideals, events, and nearly anything I found worth writing about. I filled the entire book with a years worth of my life. Then, when the last page had been filled, I placed the book in storage and began again with a fresh book. This was also placed in storage with the other one and a third book begun.
I did not realize it at the time, but I had inadvertently placed a profound lesson in those pages. That lesson came about four or five years later, when I happened upon my journals while cleaning the apartment. Being a lover of reading and highly curious I picked up the first one and began to read. First one page...then another...then another.
At about the 20th or 30th page, I finally stopped. It had become entirely clear to me that I was not going to find a contradiction to what I had found, and consequently tried to deny upon reading the first of those pages.
To my shock and horror I had found that the person who had written those pages was not me. Not even in the slightest.
During the years, somehow, I had changed as a person. Like sand accumulating on a beach, I had acquired new life experiences and my innermost being, unbeknownst to me, had changed itself to fit my new reality.

Now the beginning paragraph of this entry suggests a question: how did I handle this discovery about myself?
...The answer is....I simply cannot say. I must leave it to you to determine, by what you observe, what effect it has had on my life. That is all.

And to you who are young or who may think that what I have said above has no bearing on you, I issue you this challenge. Do as I have done. Write a journal or a diary. Put everything into it, both logical and emotional, whether or not it may have bearing on the outcome. Then put it away, for you to find sometime in the future, and forget about it.
I warn you now, some of you will like what you find. Some of you will not.