Reading old journals

And what to do with the core question that’s always there

Spiritual growth is not linear.

It’s better understood—and certainly experienced—in spirals.

It turns back on itself continuously, yet progresses. The new places we land as we grow are always fresh, but usually, somehow, also familiar.

From time to time I thumb through old journals. They’re on the top shelf in my office presently, a space reserved for the finest spirits and indulgences.

The other day I indulged. I stood on a chair by the shelf, pulling down journals, and taking deep thirsty gulps from the years of my life that they represent.

Why do I do this?

When I could be writing new things, or otherwise moving forward, who do I look back?

Sometimes it’s curiosity that moves me. Who was I then? And can I catch glimmers from before of who I’ve become?

Just as often it’s because I want reassurance.

I want to be reassured that I’m making progress. I want to be reassured that I did my best then with what I had.

Something I noticed the other day, standing up there looking back at all those previous versions of myself, was how much creative energy I spent trying to understand and explain myself.

I look back and I see a boy, and then a man, longing for justification and understanding; longing for a final and fixed authoritative voice that says: “You’re good.”

I look back, from time to time, in large part because I want that still: That once and for all reassurance of my goodness.

As I see the previous versions of myself doing, I still succumb to the urge to outsource the answer to that core question, which comes in so many forms: Am I good enough? Am I doing enough? Do I have what it takes? Am I man enough?

I’ve been writing myself in circles about this. (And I’ve written about it before. Likely will again, and again.)

At first I thought the lesson, the wisdom, the growth for me in all of this is that I ought never to outsource the authority to answer so core a question. I ought to draw foremost and primarily on my own inner knowing. I ought to self-assure, that: Yes, of course I’m good.

And there’s something to that.

But what I’m seeing now as I scratch these fresh yet familiar words onto the pages of yet another journal that will one day occupy the top shelf, is this:

That question—the core question in all of its quotidian guises—is going to be there yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Doubts and worries find their way.

So whether through outsourcing or insourcing, my aim isn’t to land on a final fixed answer to the question, never to be bothered by it again.

I recognize that I am alive with questions. My aim is to be fully alive. Not to strive, and not to arrive, but through every reliable source of support that is available to me, outside and in, my aim is to more readily respond to the question when it does arise, in whatever form.

I want to notice that question for what it is—the natural experience of someone who cares a whole hell of a lot. I want to notice it and more readily respond, not with analysis or justification, but with grace and action.

Yeah. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m willing to do.

To put less of my energy toward analyzing whether and how I might be good, and more of my creative energy toward the joy and privilege of being the good that I am.

That. That’s some top shelf shit right there. I could sit back and sip a while on that.