Here is a story about a thing that I do
I like to capture the important events, trends, and people in my life with a single sentence whenever possible. When I'm 60, I think, how will I explain this? If I'm telling someone stories about my life, if I'm writing it out, if I'm giving my children advice; how to best express this experience?
The first thing I thought coherently, when my neurosurgeon told me I would have to have surgery, was, 'When I was 27 I had back surgery.'
See how neat and easy that is? There's no room for being scared or concerned about it now; in the future, it is already finished and in the past. Somewhere there is a me to whom that has already happened, and that me is just fine.
I think it's a good way to gain perspective, and a good way to avoid worrying about those things for which there is no point in worrying. It's almost a meditative technique. Try thinking about the thing in your life that is weighing most heavily on your mind right now, and put it into a single past tense sentence. Think about the person you will be when you speak that past tense sentence to someone else. Think about who you will be talking to, or where you will be writing it. How did it effect your life? Maybe it really was huge, maybe it changed everything; maybe you gained an entire other layer to your personality because of that one thing. In that case, won't it be the best chapter in the book?
I think I may have started doing this when I started the habit of writing eulogies in my head for my loved ones. You really have to capture a lot with those, you know. I suppose doing this with the events of my life more or less adds up to writing my own eulogy, or at least my own obituary. The eulogy exercise is more about trying to sum up the relationship I have with the various people in my life, trying to find a way to explain it.
'Since before we were adults, and until death, Kai and I were best friends.'
'I had a mother who could sing.' (This one, I'm aware, is less objectively concise - one has to know the song.)
I don't know why I do this, exactly, except that it seems to be an extension of my need to control everything that happens in my life through language. I feel safer and calmer when I'm able to properly explain things. I guess maybe it actually lets me feel like I don't *have* to control things - if I can just put the right words to them, they will surely take care of themselves. And obviously, if I can project the world in which all those things have already happened, it would be utterly pointless to even try to control them. They did happen, they are happening, they will have happened, and all I can do is try to make sure the story turns out as well as possible.
The first thing I thought coherently, when my neurosurgeon told me I would have to have surgery, was, 'When I was 27 I had back surgery.'
See how neat and easy that is? There's no room for being scared or concerned about it now; in the future, it is already finished and in the past. Somewhere there is a me to whom that has already happened, and that me is just fine.
I think it's a good way to gain perspective, and a good way to avoid worrying about those things for which there is no point in worrying. It's almost a meditative technique. Try thinking about the thing in your life that is weighing most heavily on your mind right now, and put it into a single past tense sentence. Think about the person you will be when you speak that past tense sentence to someone else. Think about who you will be talking to, or where you will be writing it. How did it effect your life? Maybe it really was huge, maybe it changed everything; maybe you gained an entire other layer to your personality because of that one thing. In that case, won't it be the best chapter in the book?
I think I may have started doing this when I started the habit of writing eulogies in my head for my loved ones. You really have to capture a lot with those, you know. I suppose doing this with the events of my life more or less adds up to writing my own eulogy, or at least my own obituary. The eulogy exercise is more about trying to sum up the relationship I have with the various people in my life, trying to find a way to explain it.
'Since before we were adults, and until death, Kai and I were best friends.'
'I had a mother who could sing.' (This one, I'm aware, is less objectively concise - one has to know the song.)
I don't know why I do this, exactly, except that it seems to be an extension of my need to control everything that happens in my life through language. I feel safer and calmer when I'm able to properly explain things. I guess maybe it actually lets me feel like I don't *have* to control things - if I can just put the right words to them, they will surely take care of themselves. And obviously, if I can project the world in which all those things have already happened, it would be utterly pointless to even try to control them. They did happen, they are happening, they will have happened, and all I can do is try to make sure the story turns out as well as possible.