Personal journaling, keeping a log of special memories preserves them for your own gratification, but also for the pleasure of generations to come.
If you're fortunate enough to have grandparents living, don't you enjoy listening to stories of their youth? Isn't it great to hear what your parents did when they were younger? And isn't it a hoot to hear your parents' recollections of their "good old days"? Don't you smile when you hear the tales of what you did "when you were little"? At today's breakneck, too-much-to-do-and-too-little-time speed, it often seems we don't that time to enjoy events as they happen, much less commit them to memory to relate them later.
Personal journaling gives you the opportunity to savor even the little things that make each day special, to relive memories, to record them for your own gratification, and to preserve them for future generations. Journaling can bring you close to people you haven't even met yet. One day, your great-granddaughter may read your journal and say, "Wow, I want to be just like her." If you don't have time to journal every day, make it a point to journal weekly. You may have time to write daily, but you may simply need a reminder. Buy a calendar with daily pages to jog your memory to journal, to write down your thoughts, a joke, reflections of your life, a conversation that had special meaning for you.
We think of life insurance as something left behind--primarily money--to preserve the quality of life for our loved ones in our absence. Think of personal journaling as a different kind of life insurance. Aren't the memories we leave behind as valuable as money?
Don't rely on your memory to preserve special events and occurrences. Even for the time that I've been journaling, I've gone back through my journals and found where I'd written down things my children had said or done and thought, "How sweet. I'd forgotten that." I'd forgotten something that happened only a few months ago. Had I thought it was something I'd always remember without having to write it down, it would've been gone.
My grandmother has a Bible that belonged to her mother. Now that her mother is dead, she likes to look at that Bible and trace her fingers across her mother's written words. The words themselves are probably irrelevant, but they represent tangible evidence of someone who isn't with her anymore. How much more comforting it would be if those words were sharing memories of times the two of them had laughed together, cried together, talked about their hopes, dreams or fears.
Personal journaling can provide you with some "life insurance" of your own. How often are people's memories robbed of them due to accidents or diseases? By preserving your memories on paper, you'll always have them.
Personal journaling provides a type of life insurance that money can't. When we lose someone we love, we want to grasp some part of that person and cling to it forever. Personal journaling allows those who love you to do that in a way that will assuredly bring them comfort.
