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Treasure trove of letters and diaries
In the last MLT Q and A about Austria, was really intrigued by the old family letters and hand written correspondence that Mona and Lisa found, and were able to piece together how the war affected their family. The madness of the war affected even a small rural town in Austria, pitting neighbour against neighbour.
This got me thinking about how valuable old letters and diaries can be. If those letters were not retained and stored away for safe keeping, Mona and Lisa never would have learned of their family history and things that happened in the war that affected their grand parents and relatives. I think learning about the experiences and life drama of our relatives and even strangers is enriching.
In the 90s when my dad worked teaching math in Japan as a post retirement job just because he loved teaching, wrote me many handwritten letters over a span of nearly 10 years, and I don’t know what happened to those letters, and I kick myself now I did not save them. I may have kept some in my desk but probably got thrown out when I moved out. With my dad in a care home now with dementia, those letters of daily life and concern he wrote me decades ago would be so priceless.
I came across this Ted Talk that I found really inspiring.
https://youtu.be/CIopFzbIPJw?si=YCS69D8MT3-g3m9B
There are people out there who collect and read old diaries and journals of strangers. I guess it would be OK for a total stranger to read my deepest secrets. This Ted Talk expresses how everybody has a story, one worthy of sharing, and that the emotions we have in life are really timeless.
Those of us blessed with the gift of creating music, art, and poetry can capture their life’s emotions forever, that can perhaps help someone going through a similar experience as yours many years later. Hand written letters and diaries can be similar as our life drama and emotions and thoughts are captured in them. On the internet I learned some people just burn their journals after they finish them, which I think is a shame. It would be valuable if grand children or distant relatives decades or centuries later could have access to them. Apparently there is an organization in London and other places that collect old diaries/journals like this site where you can submit them for historians and social study scholars to have access to them to be able to see the normal every day peoples lives at different times in history. It’s kind of like leaving a time capsule for our distant descendants to get a glimpse of our world and our emotions.. The Great Diary Project.
Does anyone here keep diaries/journals or collect old family letters and postcards? What do you want to become of them when you are gone? I’ve been journaling off and on since childhood, but started a real collection for the last 15 years that now span 30 journals, and 23 pocket journals. I sometimes enjoy going back and reading them occasionally to remind me of my thoughts and what my life was like at different points in the past 15 years. I find the moments with my mom when I visited her in the care home and the feelings I had dealing with her dementia the most valuable and insightful. It’s painful to relive sometimes, but I don’t want to forget that period either, as she was the most beautiful and precious person in my life even then. They give me insight into how I changed and thoughts and feelings I forgot about. I figured though they would end up in a landfill after I am gone, but perhaps I see there are other options for them. Maybe can be of value for someone in the distant future, a relative or stranger.
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