E. A JOURNAL CAN BE A PERSON'S BEST FRIEND

Years ago the CBS news commentator, Edward R. Morrow, created  a series of five-minute  broadcasts called "This I Believe."  Each program presented some well-known personality to make a five-minute "faith statement," a statement of his or her perception of Truth or Reality.

I'd like to recommend this as a useful homework assignment for you as you read these pages and continuing long after you finish these pages, and along with it a special tool.    Call it a journal if you wish, but with the specific intention of focusing on your understanding of the Truth about Reality as you perceive it.  It could be called "My Answer to the Question, 'What Is Truth?'"  or "What's Going On In My Life."  You give it your own title.  You don't have to write in it every day, just on those days when something happens or some insight comes that informs or alters or expands your understanding of life, yourself, people, history, God -- anything.  And I suggest that you keep this journal private.  Keep it in a secure place so that you have the assurance that you can write whatever you wish in it without fear that it will be read by anyone else.   That way your journal will become like a trusted friend with whom you can share anything and everything.  My journal has become one of the best friends I've ever had, second only to my wife.

Just promise that you'll never erase or change anything you have written because part of the value of this ongoing exercise is to read what you've written in the past and observe how some of your perceptions, your beliefs, have changed.  This suggestion arises out of the work of Ira Progoff and his "Intensive Journal Keeping" program.  What I'm suggesting here is not that intensive.  ( If you want to pursue it further check the bibliography at the end of this Reflection.)  But the point about reading back over what you have written earlier is very important.  Progoff calls it "Journal Feedback."  It's a way of keeping track of your development of thought.

Of course our thought will develop only if we acknowledge that it has some developing to do.  We've learned so much about so many things that it's tempting to believe that we've just about learned it all.  But Thomas Edison would be right today if he said what he did at the beginning of the twentieth century,  that"we don't know one ten thousandth part about anything."  When it comes to understanding, humility becomes us.  In fact, it's only to the extent that we recognize our ignorance that we will increase our knowledge.  That's the trouble with a fanatic, whom someone defined as "The person who does what God would have done if God had known all the facts of the case."

No matter which of the questions we're wrestling with, chances are we're short of information.  Bertrand Russell said, "The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent people are so full of doubts."  That may be a but overstated, but this is why, in the course of our exploration for Truth, we do well to keep in touch with the people who think differently from ourselves.  We always stand to learn something from them and grow from new truth that challenges us.  As Reinhold Niebuhr said, "We must fight their falsehood with our own truth; but we must also fight the falsehood in our own truth."

It may begin to sound as though we can't know anything for sure and that Truth is so elusive it's hardly worth pursuing.  Let me repeat that I don't buy that because we can go with the truth we have, but only if we're open to the possibility that the truth we have may have to be amended in the future.  We simply have to stop short of claiming that we have the whole and final Truth about anything.  The best that we can know is somewhat tentative.  For me, that makes the quest even more exciting than it might be.  I think it was Harry Truman who said, "It's what you learn after you know it all that really counts."

So the purpose of this first homework assignment is twofold: to give you a chance to record the insights and experiences that occur to you before you forget or "lose" them; and to maintain something of a running record of how your understanding has  grown or your perceptions have change.  Along with a clear windshield, it's always good to have a good rear-view mirror.


 NEXT TIME:   SEEING VS. OBSERVING


EXTENDED READING IF YOU'RE INTERESTED:

Progoff, Ira, At a Journal Workshop, available from Dialog House Associates, Inc.  80 East llth st, Suite 305, New York, NY l0003-6008, or phone (800) 221-5844.  This agency schedules Intensive Journal-Keeping Workshops all over the country.  Information is available at this location.

TOOLS AND APPROACHES  -  E

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