Starting on the Druid path as a Bard years ago, I was faced with the reality that I may be better enriched should I keep, at least, a journal of my travels through the forest journey. After all, it is suggested in the gwerse itself. I did begin to write, though it was a rather anemic recording of my journey. Nevertheless it sufficed to remind me what I had experienced and helped to organize my thoughts and work. The truth is – writing is hard work, and even more daunting is writing of your own personal experience.

In this excerpt from Arnold Bennett’s book from 1918 ‘Self and Self-management: Essays about Existing’, I found words that helped me assimilate my feelings on the chore of writing my journeys. My only regret is that I didn’t find this passage years ago when I first started the Order. Perhaps my first exercise would have been first to write how I felt about keeping a journal!

May you find this a treasure in your crane bag.

Ken Webster, Druid – Awen’s Light Grove and Three Rivers Grove – Alban Eiler 2013

I

Let us consider, first, a strange quality of the written word.

The spoken word is bad enough. Such things as misfortunes, blunders, sins, and apprehensions become more serious when they have been described even in conversation. A woman who secretly fears cancer will fear it much more once she has mentioned her fear to another person. The spoken word has somehow given reality to her fear. But the written word is far more formidable than the spoken word. It is said that the ignorant and the uncultured have a superstitious dread of writing. The dread is not superstitious; it is based on a mysterious and intimidating phenomenon which nearly anybody can test for himself. The fact is that almost all people are afraid of writing — I mean true, honest writing. Vast numbers of people hate and loathe it, as though it were a high explosive that might suddenly go off and blow them to pieces. (That is one reason why realistic novels never have a very large sale.) But the difference between one man’s dread of writing and another man’s dread of writing is merely a difference of degree, not of kind. And if any among you asserts that he has no fear of the written word, merely because it is written, let him try the following experiment.

Take—O exceptional individual!—take some concealed and blameworthy action or series of thoughts of your own. I do not mean necessarily murder or embezzlement; not everybody has committed murder or embezzlement, or even desires to do so; I mean some matter—any matter—of which you are so ashamed, or about which you are so nervous, that you have never mentioned it to a soul. All of us—even you—have such matters hidden beneath waistcoat or corsage. Write down that matter; put it in black and white. The chances are that you won’t; the chances are that you will find some excuse for not writing it down.

You may say:

“Ah! But suppose some one happened to see it!”

To which I would reply:

“Write it and lock it up in your safe.”

To which you may rejoin:

“Ah! But I might lose the key of the safe and some one might find it and open the safe. Also I might die suddenly.”

To which I would retort:

“If you are dead you needn’t mind discovery.”

To which you might respond:

“How do you know that if I was dead I needn’t mind discovery?”

Well, I will yield you that point, and still prove to you that your objection to the written word does not spring from the fear of giving yourself away. The experiment shall be performed under strict conditions.

Empty your house of all its inhabitants save yourself. Lock the front-door and the backdoor. Go upstairs to your own room. Lock the door of your own room. Pile furniture before the door, so that you cannot possibly be surprised. Light a fire. Place the writing-table near the fire. Arrange it so that at the slightest alarm of discovery you can with a single movement thrust your writing into the fire. Then begin to write down that of which you are ashamed. You are absolutely safe. Nevertheless you will hesitate to write. And you will not have got very far in your narration before you find yourself writing down something that is not quite so unpleasant as the truth, or before you find yourself omitting some detail which ought not to be omitted. You will have great difficulty in forcing yourself to be utterly frank on paper. You may fail in being utterly frank; you probably will so fail; most people do. When you have finished and hold the document in your hand, you will start guiltily if the newly moved furniture creaks in front of the door. You will read through the document with discomfort and constraint. And you will stick it in the fire and watch it burn with a very clear feeling of relief.

Why all these strange sensations? You could not have been caught in the act. Moreover, there was nothing on the paper of which you were not fully aware, and which you had not fully realised. Nobody can write down that which he does not know and realise. Quite possibly the whole matter had been thoroughly familiar to you, a commonplace of your brain, for weeks, months, years. Quite possibly you had recalled every detail of it hundreds of times, and it had never caused you any grave inconvenience. But, instantly it is written down it becomes acutely, intolerably disturbing—so much so that you cannot rest until the written word is destroyed. You are precisely the same man as you were before beginning to write; naught is altered; you have committed no new crime. But you have a new shame. I repeat, why? The only immediate answer is that the honest written word possesses a mysterious and intimidating power. This power has to do with the sense of sight. You see something. You do not see your action or your thoughts as it might be on the cinema screen—happily!—but you do see something in regard to the matter.

II

The above considerations are offered to that enormous class of people, springing up afresh every year, who say to themselves: “I will keep a diary and it shall be absolutely true.” You may keep a diary, but beyond question it will not be absolutely true. You will be lucky, or you must be rather gifted, if it is not studded with untruths. You protest that you have a well-earned reputation for veracity. I would not doubt it. When I say “untruths” I do not mean, for instance, that if the day was beautifully fine you would write in your diary: “A very wet day to-day; went for a walk and got soaked through.” I am convinced that you would be above such lying perversions. But also I am convinced that if a husband and wife, both as veracious and conscientious as yourself, had a quarrel and described the history of the quarrel each in a private diary, the two accounts would by no means coincide, and the whole truth would be in neither of them. Some people start a diary as casually as they start golf, stamps, or a new digestive cure. Whereas to start a diary ought to be a solemn and notable act, done with a due appreciation of the difficulties thereby initiated. The very essence of a diary is truth—a diary of untruth would be pointless—and to attain truth is the hardest thing on earth. To attain partial truth is not a bit easy, and even to avoid falsehood is decidedly a feat.

III

Having discouraged, I now wish to encourage. Many who want to keep diaries and who ought to keep diaries do not, because they are too diffident. They say: “My life is not interesting enough.” I ask: “Interesting to whom? To the world in general or to themselves?” It is necessary only that a life should be interesting to the person who lives that life. It you have a desire to keep a diary, it follows that your existence is interesting to you. Otherwise obviously you would not wish to make a record of it. The greatest diarists did not lead very palpitating lives. Ninety-five percent, of Pepys’s Diary deals with tiny daily happenings of the most banal sort—such happenings as we all go through. If Pepys re-read his entries the day after he wrote them, he must have found them somewhat tedious. Certainly he had not the slightest notion that he was writing one of the great outstanding books of English literature.

But diaries are the opposite of novels, in that time increases instead of decreasing their interest. After a reasonable period every sentence in a diary blossoms into interest, and the diarist simply cannot be dull—any more than a great wit such as Sidney Smith could be unfunny. If Sidney Smith asked Helen to pass him the salt, the entire table roared with laughter because it was inexplicably so funny. If the diarist writes in his diary, “I asked Helen to pass me the salt,” within three years he will find the sentence inexplicably interesting to himself. In thirty years his family will be inexplicably interested to read that on a certain day he asked Helen to pass him the salt. In three hundred years a whole nation will be reading with inexplicable and passionate interest that centuries earlier he asked Helen to pass him the salt, and critics will embroider theories upon both Helen and the salt and will even earn a living by producing new annotated editions of Helen and the salt. And if the diary turns up after three thousand years, the entire world will hum with the inexplicable thrilling fact that he asked Helen to pass him the salt; which fact will be cabled round the globe as a piece of latest news; and immediately afterwards there will be cabled round the globe the views of expert scholars of all nationalities on the problem whether, when he had asked Helen to pass him the salt, Helen did actually pass him the salt, or not. Timid prospective diarists in need of encouragement should keep this great principle in mind.

You will say:

“But what do I care about posterity? I would not keep a diary for the sake of posterity.”

Possibly not, but some people would. Some people, if they thought their diaries would be read three hundred years hence, or even a hundred years hence, would begin diaries to-morrow and persevere with them to the day of death. Some people of course are peculiar. And I admit that I am of your opinion. The thought of posterity leaves me stone cold.

There is only one valid reason for beginning a diary—namely, that you find pleasure in beginning it; and only one valid reason for continuing a diary—namely, that you find pleasure in continuing it. You may find profit in doing so, but that is not the main point—though it is a point. You will most positively experience pleasure in reading it after a long interval; but that is not the main point either—though it is an important point. A diary should find its sufficient justification in the writing of it. If the act of writing is not its own reward, then let the diary remain for ever unwritten.

IV

But beware of that word “writing.” Just as some persons are nervous when entering a drawing-room (or even a restaurant!), so some persons are nervous when taking up a pen. All persons, as I have tried to show, are nervous about the psychological effects of the written word, but some persons—indeed many—are additionally nervous about the mere business of writing the word. They begin to hanker, with awe, after a mysterious ideal known as “correct style.” They are actually under the delusion that writing is essentially different from talking—a secret trade process!—and they are not aware that he who says or thinks interesting things can write interesting things, and that he who can make himself understood in speech can make himself understood in writing—if he goes the right way to work!

I have known people, especially the young, who could discourse on themselves in the most attractive manner for hours, and yet who simply could not discover in their heads sufficient material for a short letter. They would bemoan: “I can’t think of anything to say.” It was true. And, of course, they could not think of anything to say, the reason being that they were trying to think of something to write, and very wrongly assuming that writing is necessarily different from saying! Writing may be different from saying, but it need not be different, and for the diarist it should not be different. And, above all, it should not be superficially different. The inexperienced, when they use ink, have a pestilent notion that saying has to be translated or transmogrified into writing. They conceive an idea in spoken words, and then they subconsciously or consciously ask themselves: “I should say it like that—but how ought I to write it?” They alter the forms of their sentences. They worry about grammar and phrase-construction and even spelling. As for grammar and spelling, in the greatest age of English literature neither subject was understood, and no writer could be trusted either in spelling or in grammar. To this day very few writers of genius are to be trusted either in spelling or in grammar. As for phrase-construction, the phrase that comes to your tongue is more likely to be well constructed than the phrase which you bring forcibly into being at the point of your pen. If you know enough grammar to talk comprehensively, you know enough to write comprehensibly, and you need not trouble about anything else; in fact, you ought not to do so, and you must not. Formality in a diary is a mistake. Write as you think, as you speak, and it may be given to you to produce literature. But if while you are writing you remember that there is such a thing as literature, you will assuredly never produce literature.

This does not mean that you are entitled to write anyhow, without thought and without effort. Not a bit. Good diaries are not achieved thus. Although you may and should ignore the preoccupations of what I will call, sarcastically, “literary composition,” you must have always before you the ideal of effectively getting your thought on to the paper. You would, sooner or later, say your thought effectively, but in writing it down some travail is needed to imagine what the perhaps unstudied spoken words would be. And also, the memory must be fully and honestly exercised to recall the scene or the incident described. By carelessness you run the risk of “leaving out the interesting part.” By being conscientious you ensure that the maximum of interest is attained.

Lastly, it is necessary to conquer the human objection to hard labour of any sort. It is not a paradox to assert that man often dislikes the work which he likes. For myself, every day anew, I hate to start work. You may end your day with the full knowledge that you have had experiences that day worthy to go into the diary, which experiences remain in your mind obstinately. And yet you hate to open the diary, and even when you have opened it you hate to put your back into the business of writing. You are tempted to write without reflection, without order, and too briefly. To resist the temptation to be slack and casual and second-rate involves constant effort. Diary-keeping should be a pastime, but properly done it is also a task—like many other pastimes. I have kept a diary for over twenty-one years, and I know a little about it. I know more than a little about the remorse —alas, futile!—which follows negligence. In diary-keeping negligence cannot be repaired. That which is gone is gone beyond return.

By: Jeremy Edwards, OBOD Druid

“Do not dwell in the past. Do not dream of the future. Concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Buddha

I believe Buddha had a point when speaking about our mindset. We cannot change the past, so dwelling on our mistakes or failures can only lead to heartache and needless suffering. What if you could change the past? What if you were granted the ability to return to a moment in your life or a moment in the course of human events and change one thing? What would it be? The people who answer “nothing” would be the most content and have the most inner-peace.

To answer this question for yourself, you first have to understand what “life” is. Life is a series of ups and downs; lows and highs; pitfalls and promise. Life is more than our fleeting existence on this world. Our life and our choices are interwoven into a universal tapestry containing threads of every else’s lives. Your actions and your words have a profound impact upon the lives of those around you and, by extension, the lives of everyone around them. Life is as a pebble tossed into a lake; the ripple effect can only extend outward, but let us concentrate on the analogy of the tapestry.

Every tapestry is unique because tapestries are made out of individual threads. Each person’s life makes up a tapestry containing the threads of their life. These threads are the actions and consequences that occur from the most mundane to the most profound. For instance, you could choose to wake up at 6:30 in the morning and die in a car accident, but by waking up at 6:31, you would avoid the accident completely. There is a saying that “no man is an island” and with that thought in mind, no tapestry is a universe unto itself. When we interact with others, threads from our own tapestry interweave with threads from another person’s tapestry, connecting our lives.

Going back to the question, then, if you had the ability to return to a point in time in either your life or the life of someone else, would you make any changes or would you allow events to unfold as before. Once, I would have answered this question with a resounding “YES”. There are many things I would have once changed, if given the chance – accident and personal violence which have affected my relatives, for example and untimely bereavement for myself would make the top of the list, however, that would not necessarily be in the best interest of anyone because those events were pivotal to events, which occurred afterward.

Changing an event in the past is akin to pulling a loose thread out of a tapestry. When you see a tapestry, sometimes a thread has broken and is sticking out. It looks bad and makes you want to pull that thread out, but if you do, you cause a chain reaction, which can destabilize the integrity of the tapestry and cause it to unravel. Without the loss of my first son, would we have chosen to have another? Everything my second son has done and every life he has touched would be changed. I can’t bear the thought that he might never have been.

One telling example, though, is the most powerful event in the life of my family. Twenty-Five years ago, my mother and sister were involved in a head-on collision with a man who was traveling on the wrong side of the road. Doctors believe this wreck acted as a catalyst for my mother’s Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia and Lupus. You can imagine the far-reaching effects of such a catastrophic accident, stretching forward through the years. One result was that I no longer had money to attend college. I dropped out and found a job with a local company. Three years later, I married my wife and we had a little boy. I received a job transfer to North Carolina a few years after that and after a series of other events now work in a job that will pay for my retirement and my son’s college education.

If I had a chance to stop my mother’s car accident, these events would not have happened. I would have stayed in college, never met my wife and would be working as a journalist instead of a computer technician. Who knows what I would be doing now, with the economic turmoil that has occurred in the last 15 years. Everything in my life has occurred because of a chain reaction caused by another event in my mother’s past.

IF we had the ability to go back and change things, would we have the RIGHT to do so? I live by the mantra that I will never ask anyone to do something that I am unwilling to do myself, so I am willing to expose my life, thoughts, pains, fears and struggles, if it helps even a single person reconcile some of their own questions or struggles. One of the most powerful changes I made in my life, while going through the OBOD coursework, was that of letting go. I let go of anger, pain, regret, resentment, malice, hatred and most importantly, that annoying question of “what if”.

I could talk about my traumas at work, and the pain, anger, resentment, hostility and want of revenge that I felt, but never followed through on. Through this process, I let it all go. Everything. Once that was gone, once I was clean again, I felt vulnerable.

Exposed. But I could now look in the mirror at myself and truly see myself. I could finally love myself, regardless of my mistakes or sins, because I had forgiven myself and those who had hurt me. It was like a lead weight had been removed from my shoulders. I want to share this experience with others, but I don’t want to force someone to that point until they are ready. That’s something I learned in the Druid grade. We are keepers of knowledge and mysteries, and it is our obligation to share our insights with others, as is appropriate.

When I entered the Bard grade, I was a different person than I am today. Bard grade revealed me for the first time and allowed me to see who I was. Not to change it, but to understand myself better. I became like a caterpillar, naked, exposed and vulnerable. So I wrapped myself up within my studies and continued on with the Ovate grade. I had formed a chrysalis around myself, without even realizing I had done it. At the end of the journey, I came out of the chrysalis and found I was a butterfly. I loved myself for the first time in a long time and I understood that the pain I had gone through up to that point had allowed me to transform into the person I am today. I continued to grow, while in the Druid grade, but I had to learn what was appropriate to share with others.

No good can come of dwelling on questions like, What could I have done differently? What if I hadn’t said this, or done that, or treated someone like this. What if I had only been there sooner or What if I had stopped a person from doing something. A person can struggle with such thoughts and feelings so much, that they eat away at them and cause untold amounts of pain and for what purpose? We can’t go back to change it and even if we could, it’s the pain that makes us stronger. It’s the sum total of our life experiences that make us who we are.

Once a person understands this important point, they can move on to the next step of healing by forgiving themselves and others, whether they deserve it or not.