There’s something monumental about finishing a diary.

Yesterday I wrote the final entry in a diary I’ve been keeping since last September. I usually try to end each diary with something poetic about life–how much it’s changed and how far I’ve come. This time I scribbled about mortality and thankfulness and then wrapped it up with a paraphrase of the verse on its front cover.

And now these three remain:
Faith, Hope, and Love.
But the greatest of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13:13)

I hope that my diary embodied that verse in some way, even if only a little.

Many of the memories in my diary wouldn’t seem momentous to others. A lot of the entries are just about plain old life, people, and thoughts, and trying to sort it all out. But my diary isn’t for others to read (I dread the thought!). It’s personal. And that’s what makes it special.

I sometimes relinquish the task of writing in it. There are times when I either don’t know what to say, how to say it, or even whether I should say it. But somehow my pen always finds its way back to those blank pages. My diary knows more about me than I would like to know about myself. It holds more mysteries than I can solve. It’s not perfect, but that’s what makes it beautiful.

By keeping a diary, I’m telling myself something important. I’m admitting that life is not only worth living, it’s worth remembering.

“There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.”
–Alexander Woollcott