Today I ate a sardine...
& the value of the examined life
Hi friend,
I’ve been revisiting my old journals lately, something I rarely do. I pulled them out in advance of an interview for a New York Times feature on The Book of Alchemy, and before the reporter arrived, I spent some time perusing them. I can only think of three times I’ve gone back and reread my journals in a concerted fashion—once when I was mining material for my column “Life, Interrupted,” then again for my memoir Between Two Kingdoms, and most recently while writing The Book of Alchemy. I’m not sure why I don’t look back at them more often; likely I’m afraid I’ll cringe at what my younger self wrote.
But in fact, I’ve been delighted by what I’ve uncovered. I found one of my very first journals of letters to Jon—a practice we began early on in our relationship, when we were puzzling through the normal questions of dating and love and trying to figure out if we could really make this work. We both were spending a lot of time on the road, and to stay connected, we’d write morning pages to each other, then snap photos of the entry and send it via text. Much of what I wrote was searching and introspective, but there’s also the stuff of everyday living, like this entry from 2018. “Today I ate a sardine for the first time in my life,” I wrote. “It was okay—salty and a little slithery.”
In another entry, I took a swing at a series of questions in a news article called “Green Card Marriage Interview: Can You Pass It?” (The quiz felt funny and fun then, but it hits a little differently in this particular moment.) In still another, I made a list that I titled “Practices,” which honestly I want to recopy on a note card and pin above my desk.
Lead with kindness and thoughtfulness always.
Never let a compliment go unspoken.
Stay away from: drugs, drink, sugar, smoke, and energy vampires.
Pray: if not to a god then to something bigger than yourself.
Watch out for ego.
Never stop playing and having fun.
Say a quiet grace before eating.
There has been so much upheaval in my life, so many different chapters. So many ceilings have caved in. I’ve erected so much scaffolding, only to have it collapse and have to rebuild it again. It’s easy for me to think of my life as fragmented—to think, I’ve been so many different people.
And certainly I have changed, but in revisiting my journals, I also notice what has stayed the same—the “principle of being” that abides, as Stanley Kunitz writes in his poem “The Layers.” For me, that principle of being is an almost relentless inquiry about who I am, what I want, who I want to become. Perusing those pages, I felt such tenderness and love for that young seeker.
A few days after that New York Times interview, I hauled a few dozen of my journals down to the living room. Jon and I were working on the run-of-show for our upcoming tour, finessing the various acts, and I was looking for a particular journal entry I wanted to read from the stage. We stayed up late, and when we finally went to bed, I was too exhausted to carry them back up. I left the journals there on the coffee table, thinking I’d do it later.
The next day was a busy one: three different podcast interviews, a medical appointment, then dinner with a colleague. The appointment went long, and I had to rush out the door—and as I was passing by the living room, I glanced in to see a room full of record execs from Jon’s music label sitting around the coffee table, listening to a cut from his album-in-progress. And in the middle of the coffee table were my journals—there for anyone to pick up and flip through! What if they did? What would they think? I felt a wave of panic.
I didn’t have time to stop and move them, and even if I had, it would have been so awkward and disruptive. But after the initial shock passed, as I hurried down the sidewalk, I thought, So what? Maybe it would be a little exposing—they’d learn some particulars of what I was grappling with, be it a grievance with an ex or some friendship drama. But really, why should I be ashamed for grappling with the same things we all grapple with? With the doubts and the angst, the questions about love and loss, the peaks and valleys of this wild ride of being human?
In those pages is my search for truth, my striving to live an examined life. It’s in that spirit that, for today’s prompt, I’d like to share a page from my journal with you. It’s an entry from September 15, 2016, which I wrote while at Joe’s Coffee in the West Village. It could well be mistaken for our mission statement, even though it was written years before I started the Isolation Journals. May it help you see the richness of this practice we share and to appreciate all the gifts the journal gives us.
Sending love,
Suleika
Come see me live on the Alchemy Tour!
There are still tickets available to the Alchemy Tour shows in Minneapolis, San Francisco, and LA—and it’s going to be so joyous! You can find more info here.
Join me virtually for the Creative Alchemy Workshop!
Today’s the last chance to register for the very special virtual event I’ll be doing with my brilliant friend Elizabeth Gilbert! The Creative Alchemy Workshop will take place tomorrow, April 21 at 7pm ET. To attend, just order a copy of The Book of Alchemy, then register at the link below!
Prompt 334. The Examined Life
September 15, 2016
Joe’s Coffee, West Village NYC
I must take part of a page to thank this notebook for the space it has given me to seek clarity and truth.
These journals keep me alive; they force me to confront myself and to live a more honest life—one of reflection and curiosity and intellectual wanderlust.
A life unexamined is a life I am not interested in living.
Your prompt for the week:
Reflect on the space of the journal. What do you seek in those pages? What have you found there?
Advance Praise for The Book of Alchemy
“An extraordinary collection of wisdom. The Book of Alchemy is a springboard to new ideas, new insights, and new identities.” —Adam Grant, author of Think Again
“The Book of Alchemy proves on every page that a creative response can be found in every moment of life—regardless of what is happening in the world. It also demonstrates that we can be more creative together than we could ever be alone. I recommend it to every dreamer, with the highest respect and joy.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love
“Beyond her brilliance as a writer, Suleika Jaouad’s greatest offering to the world is her brilliance of generosity, her curiosity, her seeking heart and mind. The Book of Alchemy is an extension and expansion of these gifts.” —Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year
“Brilliant. Gentle. Encouraging. This book is the perfect mix of incandescent wisdom and kick-in-the-pants motivation to start your own creative journey.” —Kate Bowler, author of Everything Happens for a Reason
Oh, Suleika… this is exquisite! You walk the tightrope between privacy and revelation with such a rare and unguarded grace. I read this and thought: how formidable, to risk being known by one’s own words, even when they weren’t written for an audience. Especially then.
Your reflection reminded me of something I once heard the philosopher Simone Weil say in— how attention, pure attention, is the rarest and most generous form of love. And what is journaling, really, if not a sustained act of attention toward the self? Not the narcissistic kind we are often warned against, but a loving curiosity: Who am I today? What aches? What astonishes?
What I love most here is the idea that a journal, far from being a record of fragmentation, can become a map of continuity. A private epic. A place where we glimpse, again and again, the “principle of being”, not in grand declarations, but in the way a sardine tastes, in what we choose to pray to, in the ordinary miracle of morning pages sent to someone we love.
And here’s a thought this sparked in me: maybe the reason those record execs didn’t touch your journals (if they even noticed them) is because something sacred emanates from true intimacy. The invisible hush around the real. Not because it hides, but because it radiates. And those who are meant to receive it, will.
Thank you for sharing this! It made me want to dust off my own journals, not to cringe at my younger self, no, but to meet her again. She might have something to teach me.
My journal was always a place where language forgot its manners—spilling across the page like water without a cup. It wasn’t a book, not really. More like a lifeboat holding what I could no longer carry. Sometimes a puddle. Sometimes a sea.
There were years I didn’t dare open a blank page. I was afraid of what might rise—anger, sorrow, the truths I’d folded small & hidden deep. My words felt like strangers. I didn’t know how to greet them without trembling.
Now I come as I am. Rambling, restless, reverent. Some days I bring questions. Other days, confessions. The page never flinches. I’ve found silence there. Also, evidence I survived.
A soft place to land, even when the fall is my own.
See you & EG at your Monday – 7pm & my Tuesday – 9am X