The other day, I heard an interview with an historian who made an interesting statement. He said that, thanks to the pervasive rise of digital technology, the 21st century is the most well-documented in history.
But because our photographs, mail and recorded memories are mostly virtual, it’s going to be an incredibly difficult period for future historians to research. When I heard that, I thought of my great-grandmother, Marion Perry. Growing up, I saw her little dollar store diary, with its metal clasp, laying on her end table whenever I went to her home. It was only when she passed away that I learned her practice of keeping a diary extended well beyond her senior citizen years — it began shortly after her first child, my grandfather, was born in 1937. At the end of each diary, grandma wrote down highlights of that year and typed those entries out on her typewriter. When she passed away, each of her children’s families received a copy of those entries. It’s been fun to read of her life from the 1930s and ‘40s, when she was raising her three boys, to the time she had grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. When she died in 2008, copies of those highlights — seven decades worth — were distributed to each branch of the family in a booklet she titled, Memoirs. Those memoirs are a goldmine of genealogy and local history, and they offer a glimpse into what daily life, including the mundane, was like then. She writes of her husband taking their one-year-old son (my now 83-year-old grandfather) into Cass City to buy a snow suit and cap. Incidentally, my grandfather now lives just a few blocks from where that snowsuit was purchased eight decades ago. Also included are life events, such my dad’s birth, my parents’ wedding, and the day I came into the world in 1991. There are entries, too, about events of a more historic nature. The election of presidents, of Richard Nixon’s visit to Cass City in 1974, and of national calamities, from Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK, to the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. All of this creates a beautiful tapestry of my great-grandmother’s life, and gives me a sense of continuity with my family’s past. On May 15, 2010, the day after completing high school, I began keeping a regular diary, too. It’s not daily — I’m not nearly as disciplined as my great-grandmother — but I have written more days than I haven’t for the past decade. I am now on my twelfth journal. I’ve never paid much for one — in fact, the one I’m currently using was a freebie. The pages of these journals, though, are invaluable. They record the days of my life, and I can honestly say that the discipline of writing nearly every day has been a joy. I refer to keeping a diary as a discipline because that’s what it is. Cultivating a discipline is to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. It takes work because it takes time and requires a person to submit themselves to a new regimen. But it’s also a joy. Writing in a diary provides an outlet for thoughts, ideas and emotions. There are certainly other good ways to do this, but I find that putting what is in my mind down on paper is my preferred way to sort things out or even just to record ideas before bed, so I don’t have to think about them all night. It’s a helpful reference, too. Keeping a daily log of my activities and thoughts enables me to go back and confirm when various events, such as births and deaths, meetings and phone calls took place. It can also be fun to pull an old diary off the shelf, look up today’s date, and see what I was doing that day a year (or years) before. Think of it as a more intimate version of Facebook’s “memories” feature. Keeping a diary, especially a daily one, is also a way to keep a record of yourself. These records (plural, because you’ll fill several notebooks in your lifetime, if you do it right) are fun to read later on in life, despite the embarrassment they’ll occasionally bring, and they’ll certainly be a delight to your children and grandchildren one day. They’re also a record of God’s faithfulness. On several occasions, I have written prayers in my diary, then moved on with my day, only to revisit what I wrote several days later and find that the Lord had answered my prayers in unexpected ways. We can become so engrossed in asking for things of the Lord, that we forget to thank Him for how He has answered. So, here’s a challenge for the new year: go to the dollar store or wherever, and buy yourself a notebook. Put it on your nightstand or by the recliner, and don’t go to bed tonight before you write a few lines about your day, about how the Lord is working in your life, or a combination of things. Then put it down. Tomorrow, do the same thing. Sure, it’s a discipline that requires work. But before you know it, it will be a habit you can’t imagine not indulging. And future historians (and your great-grandchildren) will thank you for leaving a trace of yourself that doesn’t require a link or a password.
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AuthorTy Perry is a writer based in metro-Detroit. Archives
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