Journaling, History, & Musings

Writing is very therapeutic, but have you noticed that we seldom write anything by hand these days?  Almost the only thing we actually write is our signature now and again, and that’s pretty much it.  Well, I think it’s time to bring handwriting back.  Not only can it be every bit as soothing as some of the other ways of relaxing, it can also stimulate the “little gray cells” in ways that these other approaches can’t match.  And now that writing is something of a luxury, it can be used in a meditative way as a purely creative type of expression.  After all, writing is rooted in art.  Although those early images turned into symbols and symbols turned into letters, they still started life as drawings.

Studies have shown that the act of handwriting can help generate creative ideas, and writing them down will make those ideas easier to remember.  There is something about the mere act of forming the letters that gets the synapses snapping and focuses us on the job at hand.  I am convinced that writing is good for our brains.  Think about it; there is something rather magical about the physical act of writing.

Of course, any way you keep a journal (by hand or by computer), writing will bring you into the present.  You can deposit your anxieties and fears on the paper or the screen, congratulate yourself on your little victories, or complain bitterly without annoying anyone but yourself.  You sit down, you listen inside your head, you move your hands, and then strange marks automatically form.  The letters join and dance, and suddenly, you have connected your inner world to your outer world.  You have ditched your grievances and relieved your mind.  Consider writing in all its many forms; it is really quite magical.