“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” – Ecclesiastes 1:9

Two days ago, I finally finished another journal. Journal Vol. VII clocked in at 64 entries and 35,197 words, spanning 938 days. A lot has happened in those 938 days, and a lot has changed.  

I have been journalling for almost nine years now, with a one-year break during my senior year of high school. With every new entry, my opinion that journalling is an absolute necessity in life is more and more solidified. It isn’t just therapeutic – it’s insightful. 

I started my first journal on February 24, 2017, in the middle of seventh grade. Around February 2023, when I was in the middle of Journal Vol. VI, I decided to start digitizing all my journals in case I ever lost the physical copies. As much as I cringe at some of my early writing, it demonstrated to me once again just how important it is to remember the past. 

Not only was I reminded of several memories – both good and bad – when rereading my old journals, but to my surprise, I was able to pick out early warning signs of what would later emerge as my struggles with depression and anxiety. I was fairly social until the end of junior high – though I would still have considered myself an introvert back then – but in my entry from December 21, 2017, was a passage where I lamented how lonely I felt and wondered if I truly did have any meaningful friendships. I had a strange feeling that 2018 would be a difficult year as well, and I had no memory of writing that down until I reread it years later. 2018 was indeed a difficult year — my best friend passed away, and nearly all my other friends quickly showed their true colors. 

In my entry from February 3, 2018, I recounted what was very clearly my first panic attack just four days prior. I didn’t know this at the time, but the symptoms I described were exactly what I experience with panic attacks now. Once I did realize that what was happening to me were panic attacks, I sought out therapy and got medicated, and they have been under relative control ever since. 

In my entry from August 6, 2019, I wrote about how I had been bullied for so long that I was starting to believe the awful things my bullies were saying about me and to me. Years later, I was given this wonderful piece of advice: “Don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t take advice from.” I passed that pearl along to my younger brother about a month ago. Last weekend, we were at a late-night dinner together, and we were talking about our experiences in high school. I mentioned my struggles with depression, both past and current, and how hearing the same awful things every day starts to take a toll on your psyche. So, my brother quoted that great piece of advice back at me, and I couldn’t help but smile. 

I don’t think this is quite exactly what the author of Ecclesiastes meant when they wrote, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” But trying to figure out exactly what these ancients meant with their words is not the point of this space – it’s to apply that wisdom to the modern day. 

They say the only constant thing in this life is change. That has some merit, but it is also astounding how much history repeats itself. They also say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Humans have always been the same — you can find graffiti thousands of years old, lewd jokes written on old walls, a child’s doodles on a piece of wood. 

And even though it may seem like depression and anxiety are more rampant now than ever, I assure you this is not the case. People are simply more comfortable discussing those things once dubbed taboo. Discussion of these things furthers the conversation not just for the people engaged in it now, but for countless others in the future. 

While it may seem useless to know these things only after they have occurred, knowing what your own experiences have been and revisiting them from a different perspective can be instrumental in helping others. After my friend died at the end of eighth grade, I struggled for a long time trying to find some meaning in it. I watched a lot of Christian lecturers back then, and one of them said that bad things happen to prepare you to help other people through the same experiences. Of course, that does nothing to solve the problem of evil, but it was still quite a realization for me. 

I decided to make sure I was prepared for if and when a similar situation would happen to someone else sometime in the future, and as awful as that whole experience was, it has certainly helped others in an indirect way.