Meaningful Memoirs

Examining your life

Socrates said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living.

I wonder how many of us actually do examine our lives? My first experience of this was about 20 years ago when I helped my mother write her memoir. I picked her book up yesterday and thumbed through the pages; what a trip to read about my birth, my curious ability to concentrate (a childhood trait that’s lasted my whole life), seeing a picture of me and my first girlfriend… And my mother, what a life she had, an ordinary person with extraordinary memories. Having her life story in hand, when she’s been gone so long … what a blessing!

My business partner and I are launching a memoir writing service, offering our writing and coaching skills to help people examine their lives and record their significant memories. I’ve been hired to write memoirs for years but now Chris is interviewing me so, for the first time, I find myself telling my own life story.

What an intense experience!

It’s not just about remembering. It’s about seeing now what I couldn’t see then. Patterns, habits, repeating episodes in different places and different times with different people. And processing the residue.

What’s already become obvious is that I’ve been creating it all since day one! The belief that I’m in some sort of objective reality is toast. It’s all subjective. I can see that so clearly now. I’ve made the decisions - mostly unconsciously - that have crafted my life experience, over and over again. I turned left, I turned right, I hesitated, I plunged ahead… and it was all orchestrated. By life! By me!

We’re going to host a zoom call later this month to talk about this with anyone who is interested, I’ll share the details next week. We’ve registered our initial web site and we’ll keep adding information for friends who’d like to experiment, either on their own or with our help.

Memoirs aren’t just for the rich and famous. All of us ordinary people have actually lived extraordinary lives, but we seldom realize it, not until we do a deep review. And we wouldn’t usually undertake that unless we had a reason to. Maybe the end is near. Maybe our family has asked us to leave a record of our lives behind.

Maybe we want to prepare for that moment, when our whole lives flash before our eyes just before we die. Perhaps reviewing everything in advance could make that final instant movie more orderly. I wonder if that preparation might make a difference in whatever the next scene is, the one that follows our last breath?

I’ve often mused that dying is the most significant moment of our lives, along with being born. We can’t really prepare for birth but we can prepare for death and writing our memoir is one excellent way to do this, regardless of whether anyone else ever reads it.

I recommend that everyone keep a journal. My mother did and she accumulated years of diary entries. I helped her edit them into her book, treasured now by family members. Helping her do that planted the seed that is now blossoming into this new venture: Meaningful Memoirs, made easy with AI and self publishing.

Thanks Mom!