We are all the hero or heroine of our own story. At least we should be. None of us hopes to look back and say, “I followed.” There need to be moments, many, many moments when we lead. We don’t need to lead an army, but we do need to lead ourselves. Sometimes, true, we lead ourselves down the path of temptation or the path of least resistance or even hopping down the bunny trail, but none of those routes give the feeling of exhilaration as when we forge our own path through life or, at the least, when we take Frost’s road less traveled.
In writing the story of a life, there are chapters we’d like to edit. Huge disappointments or missteps that we’d rather not revisit, but that may have served to nudge us in a direction not previously considered or cause us to reevaluate the story we thought we were writing. Sometimes there are gut-wrenching moments when we realize someone with whom we thought we were co-writing the Great American Novel has penned their own epic, a bigger story in which we are a sub-plot, or worse, a foot note. We find we’re in a farce when we thought we were in a romance.
One needs perspective when looking at a life, especially one’s own. There should be farcical moments, mystery and suspense, at least one great romance even if it ended and became a tragedy as well as moments of high drama and times of low comedy. There need to be times when things happen that you could not have made up. This is called non-fiction because, unlike fiction, it does not have to be believable, but there will also be many bits you rewrite. All these little stories add up to the big story and if you can also work up a hilarious narrative to your life, it’s better. Maybe not better, but laughter does make much of the rest easier to take.
As for how your story ends, there may not be too much you can do to make this exactly how you'd like. The best you can hope is that your end will be colored and shaded by how you lived your life, by the story you wrote. When you are all said and done, ended, finis, the book finally completed, the story of your life from beginning to end will be viewed by others.
So go write your story and do your best to make it a good read.
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4 comments:
A farce? No I'm sure it's a romance. No really. If it were a farce I'm sure I would have noticed. No really.
Ouch. I've been the footnote - when all evidence supposed I was the Catherine, Jane and Elizabeth Bennett all rolled into one. He was certainly no Heathcliff, Rochester or Darcy. We'll call him McBastard and I hope he only gets one page in my Index.
I'm confidant that McBastard will end up being so insignificant he will only be identified in your book in the caption of a photograph as "other". As in "E, a year and a half before winning the National Book Award for best non-fiction work with her best friend, K, her father, S, and other.
Or maybe simply as unidentified companion.
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