Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you re-read your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still, it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.
Interpretation
Journaling reveals that life’s lessons often repeat over time, but our understanding deepens with reflection.
This quote by Thomas Merton emphasizes the value of journaling as a tool for self-reflection and understanding. As we document our thoughts and experiences, we may find that many of our insights are not entirely new, but rather echoes of past realizations. However, with time and repeated contemplation, we can develop a deeper comprehension of these ideas and experiences, showcasing the journey of personal growth and reflection.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development, you might say, 'As Thomas Merton once stated, keeping a journal reminds us that our life's lessons often repeat, but each time we learn more.'
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
If these town gods can't detect the thieves who steal from their own temples, it's hardly likely they'll tell me who stole my spade.
Through the senses, anger comes, and sorrow comes.
Write about the truth. If you write about the truth, somebody's living that. Not just somebody, there's a lot of people.
It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp.
Society is notoriously stupid in its failure to harness the wisdom of older women in everything from television to politics, family life to boardrooms, and here is one reminiscing with honesty and realism about women's particular challenge: to create our professional and financial structures in the same period as our peak fertility.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
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