If you had a video camera following you around and documenting everything you did would it be more accurate than what you remember? You all jump and down and say yes. But lets say the video camera is documenting an event where three or four people are involved. Would that be more accurate- and I answer maybe!
So we remember it differently than someone else but when we see it again we also see it differently too! Our filters are how we see the world and how our opinions are formed and all our memories.
So is there truth in memoir, life story and memory writing? I can not really say. But I can say there are lies. Tales we know are not how we remember them and told to make us more _____ (you fill in the blank) are lies. As I coach people writing their own life stories I always tell them to write what they remember as accurately as possible and how they remember it. It is their memories and their tale.
Frank Bruni in a recent Huffington Post article explains his feelings about the Memoirs and Memory. I think he does a really good job dicussing the issue. Here is the link to the article if you want to read it your self. I have attached some highlights for those of you with limited and my want to go back to the link later. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-bruni/memoirs-and-memory_b_288484.html
I came to see that our memories aren’t really patchy; they’re patchworks, oddly and randomly retrieved bits and scraps that we weave together into something we believe to be a more integrated, seamless fabric than it really is….Do I — do we — remember only those scenes that fit neatly into the central narrative in which we’re most invested, the one that dovetails most cleanly and neatly with the sense of self that we’ve chosen or that’s been imposed on us by the people around us?
Do we in fact have other, equally interesting life stories that we’re unaware of and unable to tell, simply because their building blocks are the
memories that fell by the wayside? Possibly. And while those memoirs might undermine the ones we’ve written, they also might just improve on them.~ Frank Bruni.
I would love to hear from all of you on your take about how memory will or has effected your life story writing! It is still important to write your life story. It is your way a leaving a foot print in the sand of this planet and your family.
