The power of writing is amazing. There is a book that contains the personal diaries of Victor Klemperer - who was a German Patriot who served during the first World War. He married a gentile and converted to Protestantism. His diaries were kept in secret during the 12 years he suffered under the Nazi regime, from 1942 to 1945.

The book begins with a quote by Victor, "I shall go on writing. That is my heroism. I will bear witness, precise witness!" May 27, 1942.

I think that writing must have some sort of sanity "magic" to it. If you stop and think about all of the writings that have evolved out of someone's personal struggles and/or times of persecution, it is rather amazing to see how it was their act of writing (in many cases) which kept them from going crazy. Think of John - from the Bible - who wrote the last book of the Bible, Revelation, from the Isle of Patmos - completely removed from society, his friends, etc...

I've not done a study on this, but I would imagine that if you or I were stranded on an island all alone, one of the things that would help us keep our sanity would be finding a way to write and record daily happenings. It's interesting, I did a google search tonight and typed in the words, "therapeutic writing" and interestingly enough found an article written about a year ago in The Observer - a UK publication on this topic. You can check it out here. Interesting article...

So anyway - don't worry, I'm not depressed or sad or going crazy, but I think we could all value from the therapeutic power of writing. Even if no one else sees it, it's a good thing.

Good night...

SH