A Diary Is As Much For Others As It Is For You
A diary, sketchbook, Notion/Obsidian, Remarkable or whatever have you. A way to remember, reign in the inner dialogue, detangle the messy thought threads. Writing is thinking, how one makes sense of life, how one expounds their world - but above all I realized, writing is sharing.
Language is like a trade between being understandable to others and binding our ways of thinking (like how many words for truth in Russia changes how one thinks about truth as in Evaluation of Russia by finnish intelligence colonel, or the understanding of absence and space in Japan and the relativism of "individuals" explored in How the World Thinks). Putting thoughts into words does give thoughts a more manageable "shape" if you will. But in the first place, you kind of have to force it into that shape. "And the triangle goes...? Into the square hole!" At the same time it both frees us by the way of expression and restricts us by the way of the language structure. Yet there is no alternative, as the hardcoded desire for socializing will compel us to express ourselves.
And the question is to what extent to we wish to express ourselves and why is it so hard to just that. Not even hard in the way of "what words in what order would convey what I wish to get across?" Through trauma and experiences we develop schemas, modus operandis, styles of forming relationships (Key to Writing Criminally Good Relationships and Limerence) that may go unexamined, unseen and develop into layers of personas (Carl Jung) that we will use to socialize. How many layers even exist? And who gets to see how deep?
In Everything Is Television by Solar Sands it is proposed that there are four levels of understanding:
- You understand that the person across from you has the capacity to think in the same way as you. You feel and think so you know they must feel and think. Both given the same information may come to the same conclusions.
- You understand that who you are trying to understand has different life experiences, so given the same information you will come to different conclusions because of that difference in experience.
- You understand that someone with (roughly) the same life experiences may still not think the same way as you. Their moral foundations, the way their brain is wired, personality may lean in completely different directions. You realize that there is no actual "universally shared experience".
- You understand that even after accounting for personality, morals, memories, genetics and an endless myriad of other conscious and physical variables, there still are an uncountable unconscious and subconscious variables that make it essentially hopeless to really understand and see anyone.
Even if it is hopeless to understand others, can we understand ourselves? When self-deception (This is not who I am) and deep rooted almost invisible traumas, with self-awareness requiring so much perseverance and energy that we've made religions out of it?
I can say with confidence that in us all lies a desire to be understood, to be seen, to be significant to at least a single other person. At the same time it is always at odds with our inability to understand and see not only others but ourselves. "I let go of the coat but the coat won't let go of me." However hopeless, we can't live without others.
I feel like writing a diary, journaling, sketchbooking is the closest we come to understanding ourselves. Where we actually give shape to the parts that would otherwise be chaotic vague floaty thoughts. However it is almost always with the asterisk of "it is only for me, NOT for sharing." And usually not for sharing to be able to keep it honest and unfiltered. It was like a sudden spotlight was turned to another one of those inconspicuous, so-normal-that-you-don't-notice-it-being-there, matured, set-in-stone, "all done" labeled premise/assumption/axiom when I asked a dear friend of mine "why do you keep a diary?" and their first answer was "because I hope someone will read it." It makes no sense, yet all the sense at the same time. Leaving aside the impracticality of getting to know someone through reading their diary and the problems that come with it, I still think the premise is both touching and important: that after all, we do want to be understood!
Being alone is worse than not being understood which is why a gap emerges between who you are, and who you are presenting. But beyond that, isn't there a desire to not have that gap? To find someone you could present yourself to honestly and without filters? Someone you could share your diary with in a way where you don't have to think about filtering?
I assume for most the filters would follow the order of:
- self, blobby mess of thoughts and feelings - no filter (?).
- diary language filter - thoughts as honest as the language allows not accounting for self-deception.
- close friends and family filter - thoughts honest as the language allows, but with parts omitted.
- interested-but-not-yet-friends filter - may or may not be honest, with many parts omitted.
- strangers filter - probably a separate persona, with some semblance of honesty.
But why stop at the third filter? Don't we want to lay it all bare for those we hold dear?
Karl Conscious Era
For my unconscious era (KBCE, the Karl Before Conscious Era, is counted from birth up to 11 years old) I was a jolly little dude with almost no boundaries. Not bothering myself with the opinions of others. If I was curious, nothing would stop me from asking even the most coldest dangerous looking guy at an Eastern Europe bus station about how he thought it was possible that such big things as planes could possibly fly. If I wanted to show up at a classical concert with winter pants (because they almost looked like shuffle dance pants) and dance shuffle with headphones on during the intermission then I would do just that. I would give in to all of my whims and hyperfocused obsessions. I did not care at all: I had my parents who supported all of what I did and was interested in. I had my friends that each shared something with at least one of my obsessions. And if they or anyone else did not understand me then that did not matter as I was the center of the universe.
Yet with puberty came Consciousness. And with it The Questions of Life (KCE, the Karl Conscious Era, is counted from the age of 12 years old and forward).
"I am me. Who am I?"
"It feels like I have a purpose. What is my purpose?"
"I want to understand myself and be understood. How can I be understood?"
Yet at that age of puberty, it is impossible to understand one's self, to even begin to answer these questions. They weren't even questions at that time, more like some vague floaty feelings and semi-related thought-loops that came to bother me from time to time.
So deep down I wanted to be understood, yet doesn't that seem at odds with my own inability to even comprehend these same questions? How would anyone possibly understand me if I myself didn't? Compounded by the very real chance that everyone else was in one way or another wrestling with the same exact questions.
Puberty is a funky time for all involved. A time where everyone wants to be noticed, understood and loved. Yet! No-one really has any attention to look beyond themselves, any capacity to understand anyone else than themselves, and no love to give just our own gaping holes in the heart to fill. It's like everyone's frantically running around asking for things they themselves can't give.
The more I pondered who I really was, the more I leaned towards not wanting to be just me. I wanted to be a friend, a child, a lover. To be myself through others, in relation to others, not just myself. I did not want to be the universe, I wanted to be a part of one now.
Of course I still carried my carefree momentum into the KCE, yet with the mess of puberty and nasty hormones all over the place it seemed to bite me in the ass. I had been carefree because I had had my needs met. With the new need of wanting to be understood came the compromises, because now I cared. Following my whims was not enough, I wanted others to accept and understand them.
Just as I wanted to be understood, but was at my capacity just by trying to understand myself, so was everyone else. And oh how painful that was, to get slapped on the wrist (both figuratively by peers, and literally on occasions by teachers) for following my whims, doing what I thought was normal. For each slap I got, I knew to keep that interest, thought, way of doing things to myself. And it was not miserable, mind you! Quite the opposite, as the more I held myself back, the more acceptance I found. I developed my Outward Persona. I was happy to meet my social needs by the way of my Persona and pursue my interests in isolation.
It was not that anybody had abused the trust I had showed. It was that parts of my self that had been dismissed again and again. I began collecting thoughts and ideas of things that fascinated and interested me. For myself, but also because I was waiting for someone to care.
I coasted through a lot of my KCE with an Outward Persona and an Inward Persona. It was pretty smooth sailing until at the age of 16 I was threatened with the wonderful experience of real romantic interest. "He was a boy, she was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious?" I had a crush, and it was mutual. And that meant they were interested in me? "Saviour to break free of the false acceptance and repressed part of your self!" you would think? Well... after having repressed much of myself for such a long time, it just did not feel real that someone would accept all of what made up the Inward Persona. I had kind of given up on that thought so I guessed that meant they were in love with the Outward Persona. So I started shoving the Inward Persona even further down the hole so as not to jeopardize the relationship. Even better: at the same time I started fostering resentment for their lack of ability to also see and appreciate the Inward Persona... that I hadn't even showed them.
Stop here and bask in the sweet sweet irony of that thought process... Truly a masterpiece of a main dish with the umami trinity of self-deceptive thought processes, garnished with helpless destruction.
Your shadow will always follow where you go. No matter how and where you stand in relation to lights, or how many lights you set up around you, the shadow will be there. Right under your feet, or between your wrinkles. Even if you could, you couldn't stay at the studio with your perfectly set up lighting anyway. So the solution to hiding my Inward Persona was to break off any relationship that came close to seeing through the cracks of the Outward one. In my effort to "not jeopardize the relationship" I did not only that, but even worse. I had showed love and interest, then started avoiding it. Viscera cleanup and healing the wound of an actual stab in the back would have probably been faster and less painful.
After I found some actual friends that I could connect with on deeper levels I began breaking the lines between the Inward and Outward. I am particularly grateful to a friend who more or less forcefully started dragging the Inward Persona out, bit by bit. But I still lean towards waiting for active interest rather than grabbing interest. I accommodate, ask and listen, waiting for someone to do the same, for it to be mutual before I open up. I love myself, I think I am interesting but I always run the calculations about whether or not someone truly cares.
A lot of my whims and ideas still find themselves expressed in my own mind, my notes. Never broadcasted, but also not not shared. Exactly like how my blog can't be found on the main pages: it is public, but not easily findable unless I share it or someone really goes out of their way to dig through the source code. I still wait for someone to ask, because at the baseline I still first assume that no-one cares and then hope that someone would.
I realize that my self is a diary that I hope I can share with others.
Writing is sharing.
