I have a note in my Google Keep app that is filled with meandering thoughts. An idea that will move me but isn’t quite complete enough to be written about. I have blog titles, the title of my future memoir, thoughts about current events, thoughts about urgent issues, thoughts about other people’s issues. So many tidbits and personal opinions that I tell myself I’ll get back to later. Things that need to be simmered and reduced down to its most essential parts. It’s not easy having a brain that generates ideas faster than it’s able to follow-through with them. They start to pile up and I always find myself standing in the middle of a room, arms overflowing with ideas and images and feelings, but forgetting why I walked into the room in the first place.

The rain is pouring outside. The house is full of energy; my kids, my mom, and our helper are all busy with their own things, voices filling the house and my head. It’s the sound of life happening around me. While it’s a sound I love to hear, it’s also one that hinders me from finishing a single thought (hence, the Google Keep list of ideas). Whenever I feel this way, it always reminds me of this Joan Didion quote:

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

I read this in an excerpt from her book Let Me Tell You What I Mean. I am not an expert on Joan Didion, nor do I profess to be like her in any way, shape, or form (one can only wish). But I relate to this, and to everything she said about writing in that excerpt, quite deeply. I understand what she meant when she said she sees a picture in her mind and that picture tells her what to write. I know how it feels to see a moment that somehow “shimmers”, as she would describe it. Seemingly commonplace and mundane, the moments conjure up a whole string of questions, stories, ideas. Like Didion, writing is the way I learn not only about my world, but what it is I think of the world. My life is a series of pictures that contain innumerable stories from single moments. There’s this compulsive need to describe them to you—how they felt, looked, smelled, tasted—so that you can be there and decide for yourself what you think. The constant stream can get overwhelming, but every once in a while, I have enough complete thoughts to paint a fuller picture. The compulsion to write isn’t so I can convince you of my opinions, but to bring you to that moment and partake of it, like a communion.

I would be remiss if I do not admit that writing is also my way of trying to be understood. So often I find myself aware of the world around me, yet so clueless about myself. I recently had a conversation with a friend where I admitted to a series of things I did in my youth that came as an absolute shock to her (wait for the memoir, which shall come at some point in the distant future, but at least I already have a title, right?). She said, you’re such a great actress. I never had any idea you were living that kind of life. And I’m realizing now that it’s because those years were spent in utter disregard of self-awareness. I went where my friends went, did what felt good in that moment, said things without thinking about the effects. Having grown up quite a bit since then, I now understand why writing was so difficult for me to pursue despite longing for it deeply: it would have forced me to take a long, hard look at myself. I couldn’t bear to look for long, and so I turned away. Writing remained a dream, and just that, for a very, very long time.

This is the beauty of growing older and choosing wisdom. While the reflection has not always been easy to look at, I know that all those shameful things are part of the pictures of my life. They shimmered. On their own, they were terrible moments. But when you look closer and ask the questions, especially the hard ones, they make for a full life. Those terrible moments make the beautiful ones even sweeter. To fully love who you are as a person, you have to love the scars that come with your stories.

I was riding home with a friend once, and he told me that my husband must be so lucky that I write so openly about my feelings. We were on the Skyway, the setting sun to the right of us, the muffled roar of the cars in the background. He doesn’t need to guess, all he has to do is read what you write and he’ll know exactly what’s going on in your head, he said. I thought this was brilliant insight, one that didn’t even dawn on me until that very moment. I let the road blur in my peripheral vision, stared at the blue sky, and made a mental note to tell my husband later that night just how lucky he was.

Writing has been quite an adventure, so far. The journey is inward but somehow it has opened up my mind to the world. It has reminded me that I don’t need to know everything, and that it is okay to not know everything; perhaps the better way to live is to not know much at all. I write because I have so many questions, but the objective is not really to know the answer. It’s how to ask the right questions, each one building up to a better understanding of the world; a better understanding of oneself.

When I started this blog entry, I knew there was something I wanted to say, but didn’t quite know how to say it. All I had was the sound of the pouring rain and the weight of ideas in my head. I sat down and started writing, just letting the words take me where it wanted to go. Every time I write here, it is permission to look at me, so that you won’t be afraid to look at yourself. More than a thousand words later, this is where my meandering thoughts have finally led us: In the truth that the only way to really know yourself, is to let yourself be known.