500+ Words Essay on Keeping Diary
A diary is a daily record of events or thoughts. According to Wikipedia, “A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date, reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period.”
According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a diary is “a book, sometimes with spaces for each day of the year, in which one writes about one’s daily experiences, records one’s private thoughts, etc.”
And, according to the US Calendar, it is a book with spaces for each day of the year, in which one can write down appointments, things to be done in the future, etc., e.g., “He/She maintains a desk diary, making a note of the next meeting, etc., in the diary.”
So there are two types of diaries: Personal Diary and Official Diary. In a personal diary, one writes about one’s personal interests, personal experiences, personal contacts, and other personal matters, even one’s private thoughts and observations. An official diary is maintained for official purposes. An employee keeps his/her records of fieldwork or office work. He/She may write about future plans and appointments, etc., also in his/her diary.
The diary is a kind of document to know a person intimately. In personal life, diaries help in having useful retrospective views. The practice is to note down briefly in the diary at the end of the day about activities done during the day, with some observations if possible. These reactions and impressions of events that occur around us, as well as thoughts that flash across our minds, are of great importance for knowing our inner self by maintaining a diary.
It is also very helpful in knowing a person’s ins and outs when they become famous and play an important role in the public life of a country. Those jottings in the diary provide the source materials for reconstructing their life story.
Great men of the past used to keep diaries regularly. It was very much in vogue in 19th-century England during the reign of Queen Victoria. Dr. Johnson’s diary helped Boswell a lot in compiling his monumental work, “Life of Dr. Johnson.” ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank is a famous work. In her diary, Anne Frank recorded her experiences during 1942-1943 when she and her family fled from their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding for the next two years in the ‘Secret Annexe.’
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Literature like Andre Gide kept diaries that subsequently took the shape of intimate journals. In fact, the personal diaries of Virginia Woolf and Mary Wollstonecraft are now documents of immense literary value and judgment. Diaries of Evelyn and Pepys of 18th century England are valuable literary accounts of thoughts, doings, and observations of the diarists. Political diaries of Nazi leaders like Goering and Goebbels and that of Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, created a great stir just after the Second World War. Pandit Nehru used to maintain jail diaries that provided sidelights on his public life. The recently published diary of Dr. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee shows his recorded reactions to contemporary political events. Rabindranath Tagore used to keep little bits of information along with his enlightening impressions when he was on a foreign tour. It is a source of research and recreation for future generations.
Diaries often serve as memorabilia for us. By turning over the pages of one’s diary, one can visualize the past and build up the future with past experience as the guide. Through the diary, one can look before and after. It is, indeed, an eye-opener.