#simran sethi

I beg the gods to let me go

But all they do is hold my throat tighter

Strangling me, consuming my body with pain

But never enough so that the I may finally flat line

Never enough to let me die

– Simran Sethi

It is these humble moments that are celebrated in the artist and writer Lissa Jensen’s online course Creating the Visual Journal. “Everything we associate with self-reflection is just as likely to be found in the mundane as in the exceptional,” she said. “Honoring the seemingly ‘trivial’ is a way of saying everything is potent, everything is useful.”

Ms. Jensen captures little moments she describes as “personal haikus” through both text and illustration. “A broken window, a vacant gas station at dusk, the calm delight of picking out ripe avocados … their power comes from their insignificance. As anyone who has read fairy tales knows, things are never just what they seem: a mirror is not just a mirror, an apple is not just an apple, the old woman in the forest is not just an old woman.”

The author Dan McAdams explains that these self-reflections are how we make sense of our lives. “Truth,” he writes in “Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self,” “is constructed in the midst of our loving and hating; our tasting, smelling and feeling; our daily appointments and weekend lovemaking; in the conversations we have with those to whom we are closest; and with the strangers we meet on the bus.”

Introspective writing can help reduce blood pressure, increase immune function and mitigate impacts of stress, depression and diseases ranging from to irritable bowel syndrome and breast cancer to asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. But its most enduring value lies in self-discovery: We unearth ourselves through the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.