Charlotte Buchsbaum did not think anyone would read her teenage diary. In March 1945, the Jewish teenager found her grandfather's old journal. She scratched out the dates and made it her own. For over half a year, she recorded her life in New York City.

Buchsbaum wrote crisply. One entry begins: "Studied all day. Going to the club now." She also recorded her outfits, school test scores, trips to the movies and the political events of the day, including the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and VE DayOn Victory in Europe Day, or VE Day (8 May, 1945), Germany unconditionally surrendered its military forces to the Allies, including the United States..

Almost 80 years later, Buchsbaum's diary has become a hit. Helaina Ferraioli, who works at her family's vintage shop in BrooklynA borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the State of New York., bought the journal in an estate sale in 2019. After rediscovering it this year, she started putting choice entries on TikTok. Ferraioli's first post received over three million views.

Our interest in diaries is nothing new. Diaries can immortalise their writers. Anne Frank, another Jewish teenager writing in the 1940s, has become internationally famous for her diary recording life in hiding under NaziA German political party of the twentieth century, led by Adolf Hitler. The Nazis controlled Germany from the early 1930s until the end of World War II. occupation. An estimated 30 million copies have been sold since 1952.¹

The English naval administrator Samuel Pepys is one of the most famous writers of the 17th Century on the strength of his private diary. Pepys witnessed the big events of his time. 

But he also fills it with juicy details, such as the time his singing woke up the neighbours or when his wife threatened him with hot tongs. This makes Pepys seem remarkably close to us.

Diaries are written by one person for an audience of themselves. They should show all the eccentricities and individuality of their writer.

Yet we often read them to gain a sense of a universal experience. TikTok users love Buchsbaum's diary because it resembles their own lives. One commenter said: "I love how even if it's different eras, people are always essentially the same."

But sometimes it is the distance of other lives that grabs us. Ferraioli enjoyed Buchsbaum's diary because it brought to life a different time and place, where people's lives were based in their local community.

Are all lives essentially the same?

Yes: The things that happen to us are often different. But most lives follow the same pattern, from childhood to old age. We all feel the same emotions. Diaries show us just how similar everyone really is.

No: When we read, we create a link between the written words and our mind. We try to find links between ourselves and others. But this is a trick of the brain. Ultimately we cannot know how others think.

Or... Yes and no. We are paradoxically drawn to the lives of others recorded in diaries, both because they offer a gateway into a different place and time and because we can feel an affinity with their writers.