Time to Reflect

Have you ever taken the time to reflect on your life? Have you made time to revisit the emotional highs and lows that have influenced the shaping of the unique you? OR, explored snapshots of events in your life that are evergreen in your memory banks? 

I have.

I’m passionate about encouraging you to record and share your life adventures, for, your stories are more interesting and more varied than any news item viewed daily.

Why do I believe storytelling is so important?

Recording and telling stories is as ancient as the rise of Man

Our Earliest Ancestors, obsessed with making their mark used pictures and symbols — words of a sort — carved into stone, wood, or tattooed into living flesh. 

All around the world, age after age, from times so distant we cannot tell, elders have told their stories to the younger generations. AND

In some cultures, where the power of stories was deeply understood and valued, stories were sacred endowments passed from one generation to the next. Through the tellings, the gathered shapes and shadows of human experience have been carefully tended, handed down, and over time added to. These originally rote-learned stories taught each new generation;

1.   how things came to be.

2.   what people could aspire to

3.   And how they should strive to live their lives.

 Legends like Maui trapping the sun to make the day longer, have fed the imaginations and souls of people for generations.

Prometheous’s theft of Fire and the gifting of it to mankind modelled what could be achieved for the good of people.

Through works like Spencer’s ‘Fairie Queen’ in which each character represents virtue or vice, expectations and social responsibility was communicated.

Folk lore too provided important lessons to be learned. I’m sure you are familiar with, Aesop’s Fables; The Honest Woodcutter, Town Mouse and Country Mouse, Fox and the Crow, Hare and the Tortoise, 725 in all were told person-to person as much for entertainment as a means of teaching a moral or a lesson. 

Today, those stories help us to know more about who we are, where we came from and what has gone before.

Story telling is, and has been, since the beginning of recorded time, of social significance. There are worlds of meaning and wisdom in social history. It is empowering and enduring.

Your Stories too are of Social Significance

Shared memories play a significant role in helping people understand the world around us.

When you reflect on your life you will be surprised by what you learn about yourself. Your memory is loaded with upsets, triumphs, agonies, and thrills that need to be shared. 

Why do I say that?

In our today’s society, the extended family rarely has an opportunity to sit down and share stories from the past. This has brought about a scarcity of social history for the 20th century and created a virtual chasm of lost information. So, get writing. Children love to hear stories about how their parents met, what their parents were like when they were children and about the day to day life of the grand and great grandparents. These stories provide a sense of grounding.

There is no need to write an entire book, short and crisp beats long and ponderous. Tell and show things as you perceived them, not as you think others would like to hear. Each story read or heard impacts, in varying degrees, on the way we act and live our lives. 

At a recent celebration of a milestone birthday, where numerous octogenarians were gathered with family members, fascinating stories of past times abounded. In awe I listened to witty renditions following one after the other and noticed a sense of companionship bloom as the listeners aligned their experiences with those of the raconteur.

 The recent past is becoming history at such a frantic pace, we, that’s you and me, have a real responsibility to fill the gap in the social history of the 20th century. Our generation is the only one that can provide the stories and the information to do this. Our experiences and lessons learned really do matter. They provide the background for the attitudes and behaviours of our children and grandchildren as they struggle to find meaning in their own lives. There are worlds of meaning to be expressed — and it is our place to provide that. I encourage you to take the time to record events that readily spring to mind. It is we who have a responsibility to record our memoires in a manner that can be kept for future understanding as well as amusement.