Lessons from an autobiography

Every now and then, I get the desire to write down some part of my personal history. This time, it was from my early adulthood.

I spent several days, off and on, writing out and researching memories. I started with what I recall now, and then I looked up old emails.

I have always kept most of my old emails. I can access the ones that are from after 2004, which must have been when web mail programs stopped limiting space. I probably have even more saved somewhere, because I used to copy and paste them into long documents and save them. But likely they are on floppy disc or CD and not easily accessible.

I won’t post what I wrote, because it also involves other people.  The only way I would consider sharing it is in person, on paper, with no recording devices in the room. But I enjoyed the process and I think it was helpful.  Some insights I have:

1) Memory is a story, not a recording. Even the act of recalling requires putting a filter into what is recalled. What I mean is, I always remember with a purpose and then I specifically remember what seems to address that purpose. But as I actually read some of the old emails, I started to remember things that were omitted by the filter. There’s a lot more to my life than the story I tell myself.

2) I feel like my self and identity is pretty consistent over time, but reading old emails challenges that idea. Many times I would read over points I was trying to make in the emails and wonder: “What on earth was I thinking?” “What could have been motivating me to say that?” It was as much like trying to understand a character in a book as it was like recalling the details of an event.

This was especially revelatory as part of my motivation was to compare my memories with an account I read by someone I knew at roughly the same time in our lives. I read their account thinking: “They have definitely left things out.” Well, my memory also left things out! 

3) We’ve all heard sayings like “just be yourself” “think outside the box” etc, etc. It’s cliche.  But really, we should actually try our best to think for ourselves and come to conclusions based on real experiences. It’s much more interesting reading about that than reading an account of how you once read something and decided to believe it.

4) I have some memories that can make me laugh out loud, twenty years later or almost that. It makes me happy.

5) I experienced a lot of uncertainty in my twenties about my direction in life. Plans had to be abandoned and modified. Disappointment was frequent. One thing that I think I did right, however, was engaging with small clubs and loosely organized activities that exposed me to different people and their ways of getting along and getting things done. These included volunteer jobs, ballroom dancing and step dancing, concert band, and my various employers. I was always “distributed” in the people I relied on. I am very grateful for this, and grateful for the many functional groups and systems in my current life (whatever their flaws). It’s a reminder never to underestimate the power of small systems and networks.