Diary Records

I have the option of looking up my daily diary records for what was happening on this day for each year going back to 1968.

But why might I bother?

The past is gone other than for a few memory items; the future is pure imagining; so all that I have is the present moment.

But how long is the present moment?

On the cosmic zoom the present moment ranges from subatomic nanoseconds through to historical, archaeological, paleontological, geological and astronomical scales.

Less ambitiously I could look up what was happening on this day in ten year lumps. That would be on the 20th July 2015, 2005, 1995, 1985, 1975, 1965.

Such an exercise would be possible because there are 37 ring pull folders  of diary entries covering 1968 to 2000 on the bookshelves; some are hand written, others are typed, and the more recent ones are word processed using  Locoscript, Wordperfect, and MSWord. There are digital copies from October 2003 till present. There is a gap from January 2001 till October 2003; I assume the records will be in the digital archives! But the motivation to dig them out is not high.

I am not much concerned about the detailed minutiae of my life. But I have considerable interest in the metacognitive big picture, the existential conundrum. Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? What lies beyond soap operas, stamp collecting and personalising my cave?

When I was younger, attention was captured by work. This involved getting paid for servicing someone else’s agenda. The main theme was education: teaching science and biology in the early stages and advising on leadership and management in the later stages. In five countries.

But I came to realise that ‘one size fits all’ educational development did more harm than good; it fails to adapt to the many different cultural contexts that exist. So I gave that up and became a free lance plain language editor of development literature. “Digested material gives power to the people.” But well edited bullshit is still bullshit. So I gave up freelancing and took up meditation.

And I have now been in retreat for more than ten years. Attention is focussed on rationally knowing and emotionally experiencing neurology, evolutionary psychology and mindfulness in the on-going present moment.  My diary records are therefore as much use as the Logoscript that once recorded them. The only constant thing is change so I follow the flow of thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM).

Notes:

• The basic diary pages are splurges with little thought given to their structure. Should I wish to dig into my past the pages would provide reminders of topics that would otherwise be lost. But there is no feeling or mood to produce an autobiography.
•  The Brande flows are a variation on the basic theme. The idea is to write whatever comes into my head for 20 minutes non-stop. It was flow of consciousness stuff. But it was usually uninspired and disappointing. Pass the ball to the unconscious and it does not bother to do anything with it.  I rarely use this technique these days because typing is now very slow and inaccurate because of loss of fine motor control in my fingers. (Parkinson’s Disease).
• In Lesotho I edited more than 600 one-pagers which summarised work related ideas. When working with Hakikazi in Tanzania and with the ILO in Geneva there were many more giving instruction in the plain language process. Since retiring I have written well over a thousand one-pagers dealing mainly subjectively with the topics mentioned above. Most of them are used as blogposts which may help to promote and sustain the move towards humanity’s emerging ecological and non-violent world view.