Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” eloquently captures the inherent paradox in living: every choice for contains within it all of the choices not for.

I previously had in my head but not in my heart – and I will stay with this sadness as best I can.

There are two things to avoid with your journal. One is never writing in it; the other is always writing in it. In the first case, you participate in life without observing it. In the second case, you observe life without participating in it.

The Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller reports that many adults are unable to remember their childhoods. According to Miller, these memories are repressed at a time when it is necessary for the child’s emotional survival to forget. To experience the pain of wounds inflicted by parents on whom the child is totally dependent is, in the child’s undeveloped mind, tantamount to death. And so the child learns not to feel – and eventually, not to remember – these hurts.

As a journal tool, though, Clustering does these and more. It also helps integrate the left and right hemispheres of the brain by drawing from characteristics of each. On the “right brain” side, Clustering generates an easy flow of ideas in random sequence. On the “left brain” side, it provides a structure from which information can be easily organized.

There’s a friend at the end of your pen which you can use to help you solve personal or business problems, get to know all the different parts of yourself, explore your creativity, heal your relationships, develop your intuition.