I’ve always loved writing, ever since I was a boy. I remember I used to write short stories all the time. (It’s safe to say that my genre has changed.) I would print them off, and make little books with them. Once, I even got in trouble for this: my second-grade teacher was fed up that I was constantly making books with the stapler. So, she told me off audibly in class. I guess I ran through her supplies pretty quickly. Still, despite my love of writing, oddly enough, I’ve only ever come close to filling a notebook to the brim once in my life.

It was while I was living at a monastery last year. I only brought one notebook with me, so if I wanted to write using pen and paper, I was forced to write my thoughts down there. Life was pretty quiet at the monastery, so these thoughts accumulated rather fast. By the halfway point (about two weeks), I’d filled just about half of the book. I was quite proud of myself for having written so much. I was definitely committed. That’s not to say that I was always proud of what I wrote. In fact, I find it hard to read that book at all nowadays. When I read the emotional drivel that my pen produced, I feel a strong sense of shame in what I said. How can that be me?, I’d wonder. It certainly wasn’t me at my best.

But then again, when I was at the monastery, it’s safe to say that I was struggling to cope with my emotions. When you put yourself in that kind of environment, particularly after a busy school year, it’s like slamming the breaks on your car: you’re going to get some kind of whiplash. Life at the monastery is quiet and slow. In many ways, you’re left to deal with yourself and your emotions. Thoughts that you’d been avoiding or too busy to entertain will bubble to the surface, and you’ll be forced to confront your own insecurities. It is, in certain respects, therapeutic. You’ll learn a lot about yourself there.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this time of personal growth coincided with the amount of writing I did. I have often described my writing practice as cathartic: I do it to put my thoughts in order, and in doing so, I discover a little something of myself and might even grow as a person. I write about the person I constantly struggle to be. But yet, in this world where notebooks are so easily purchased, it is easy to throw those thoughts away and start from scratch. I was gifted a notebook this Christmas, and on the very first page, I wrote some more emotional drivel that I never wanted to see the light of day. A couple days after I wrote it, I ripped it out. I was disgusted by it. I wanted to start again with a blank page.

Of course, there is no starting from a blank page. There is a tear that remains, implying that something had been written there before. Why was it torn out? Not because the writing itself was bad, but because of how I felt about it. I was, in that moment, at war with a part of myself that I didn’t like. This, of course, as you may have guessed, isn’t healthy. It’s avoidant. Rather than accepting this part of myself, I opted to toss it away. In a way, this is even a sort of self-harm. That’s not to say those ideas were my best, or that it was a valuable piece of work by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, I mean to say that it’s one thing to be self-conscious, and yet another to be self-conscious around oneself.

In writing just as in life, it’s perfectly acceptable not to be perfect. To deny this is to deny your own growth, and in many ways, it’s a denial of who you are. Oliver Cromwell, a famous Englishman, once had a portrait painted of him, apparently he was quite a ghastly figure, so much so that the painter asked him if he would like to be painted without all of his warts. In our day, it’s not uncommon to see touched-up portraits: how many people filter their selfies, after all? But Cromwell was different, and for all his faults—be them physical blemishes or moral failings—and he told the artist that he wanted to be painted “warts and all”. Not to hold Cromwell up as a role model, but you’ve got to appreciate this kind of self-honesty. It can be, after all is said and done, quite transformative.