Zen Heathen 🇨🇦<p>I happen to be watching a video about journaling--something I've often been drawn to, but generally dislike. This particular one is from the angle of "here's journaling mistakes most people make". I've just paused it to type this. I can hear him working up toward saying, "yes, studies say that journaling can improve your mental health, but don't expect it to do that for you".</p><p>It occurs to me in this moment that there may be very many areas of life where a <a href="https://beige.party/tags/Zen" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Zen</span></a> perspective might be valuable. Zen emphasizes that trying to grasp a thing is a certain way to lose it, almost no matter what it is. I think the Stoics, and even Yoda, might agree: "Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."</p><p>What Yoda meant was right along this point. You can't make yourself happy. It's not possible. In the trying, in the attempt, in the effort, you lose it, you overshoot, you miss, you ruin it. Rather, create the conditions under which you could be happy, and you will find that it happens on its own.</p><p>It seems to hold that journaling can be good for mental health. But if you seek too fervently to improve your mental health by journaling, you are paying attention to the wrong things. Simply decide to journal, stop judging your product and experience of it, and just do it. You may find that you do gain benefit from it, without trying.</p><p>Sometimes the only way to hit the target is to stop aiming at it.</p>