Week 2: Give People The Chance To Put Your Journals On A Shelf

Just because you intend something, doesn't mean it will happen. You can accidentally do something mean - but it's an accident because you have good intentions (that's not always an excuse, though). You can intend for your journal to not be read, but someone might have already found it and read it. Maybe when you left it out rather carelessly that one time by mistake, or perhaps a nosy family member carefully combed your room and now you have an avid subscriber to your life and your innermost thoughts unbeknownst to you.

Or maybe not.

Regardless, you get to decide what YOU do with YOUR journals. Now the question is; when your lifeline is coming to an end, should you destroy your journals?

On one hand, if you keep then then you run the inevitable risk of them being found, and worse, read. No doubt the words on the pages would be broadcast after your passing. Not everyone needs to know everything about you. It would be so embarrassing!

On the other hand... If you destroy them, no one would really know about you. Maybe this is getting too existential, but most people want to leave some mark on the world after they've left. The painful truth of it is that a lot of the general population will not be credited for doing something great that contributes to the building blocks of the future - they'll settle down with a family (or a bunch of cats) and pass the days doing the bare minimum. Sure you hear about older family members through stories told by others, but the stories fade with time. Make an heirloom. Make your mark.

I'm not trying to persuade anyone one way or another. I've been told that destroying your journals at some point is a purifying experience. Which is a little confusing to me because I feel that if you feel impure after writing in the diary, or if you want to forget that you felt a certain way in your past, then it sort of defeats the purpose but I digress. Like I said. You do you.

The way that I see it is, if you keep your books around then you're serving a purpose. If you plan to destroy your personal books when you're old or dying, the worst that would happen if you kept them instead is that they would be found by whoever is cleaning out your crap from your house then read sometime later. Who cares? What are they going to do? You'll be in the ground anyway. Skeletons can't blush from embarrassment.

Might I suggest an alternative, or perhaps a happy medium of both? I know I got a little deep with the existentialism and maybe making you feel small and insignificant. Hopefully this will cheer you up; bury your journals instead. Preserve them, keep them whole and when the time comes, bury them. That way they don't have to be found by those that may have to deal with the consequences of your writing. But they can be found later, way in the future by someone who is recording and analyzing history, the same way we do now. Your name and thoughts and feelings can become the building material for the future. Y'know, for when aliens want to eventually run us off of Earth and start building on top of our cities.