LIFEWIDE MAGAZINE 21 December 2018
COMMISSIONING EDITOR
Life Stories & Narratives
There are no stories more meaningful than our own biography, but unless you are a famous person its likely that your story, in all its fantastic richness, will die with you. Think of all the billions of stories that have been lost in the history of mankind. The stories we create about our life, serve many purposes but perhaps the most important is to reveal to ourselves and others that our life has meaning. Creating a life narrative is a deeply ecological phenomenon in the sense that it fundamentally connects us to our past life and to our interactions with our world and gives our very existence meaning. It involves us selecting the important moments, circumstances, people and relationships in our life, making stories about these things then connecting and weaving the stories into a narrative to create the meaning that is our life. Of course there are good and bad experiences and lots of loose ends,lost opportunities and unfulfilled ambitions, but our life narrative is a heuristic to help us make sense of and value our life as a journey. Our life story captures our appreciation of our own existence in the great story of humanity.
We tell the stories of our life to our children to illustrate some lesson we feel is important and in this process we reveal to them the person we were and are. We might draw on our experiences in conversations with friends and with colleagues at work again to illustrate a point and to convey to them the sort of person we would like them to see, and perhaps hide the stories that are not so complementary or conflict with the identity we prefer to project. As we weave our stories into a larger narrative we integrate different parts of our lives. The narrative becomes the means to integrate the different dimensions of our lifewide experiences into the journey that is our, past, present and evolving future.
The importance of life stories and narratives to us and to the people who know and love us was brought home to me recently. Indeed, this story is the inspiration for this issue of the magazine. Two weeks before writing this introduction a friend of my wife’s whom she had known and kept in touch with for over 30 years, was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that means she will completely lose her memory in the space of only a few months. Our first thought was about unfairness and cruelty especially as she is a mother of two teenage boys but these were soon replaced with what practical and emotional support can we give her and her family. My wife is really good at providing such support and she was quickly into action. After giving it some thought and thinking about the circumstances I decided to offer to help her write her life story if it was something she wanted to do. She did, and a few days later I spent a couple of hours listening to her with a digital recorder. For me it was a humbling, sometimes painful but often uplifting experience. For her, I felt it gave her enormous comfort to know that she had told her story in the way she wanted to. It was a privilege to listen to her telling story knowing that she trusted me to communicate it when she could not do so for herself anymore. What struck me was the multiplicity of stories that she wove together in a life well lived and how certain experiences or defining moments shaped in a profound way her personality and her future life.
As I reflected, I began to realise that ‘places’ can be a significant factor in the creation of life stories. As I write this short introduction, I am making my annual visit to my mum in Australia on the south NSW coast. In her mid 90’s she has lived here for the last 30 years. It’s a peaceful place called Narrawallee and she lives in a small bungalow just 10mins walk from a beach that uplifts your soul when you walk on it. I have come here many times in the last 25 years and it is inevitable we talk about our past when we meet as well as sharing all the family news. As I talk about what my children and grandchildren are doing I know I am recounting my current life stories and I am conscious of the way I tell each story and what meaning I am trying to convey. I show her photos on my smart phone and these artefacts stimulate more stories. She is clearly a catalyst for the creation and telling of my unfolding narrative.
A few years ago,when my father was alive, I sat with them in this kitchen and,with the aid of a digital recorder,I 'made' them talk about their life, recording their stories and their life narrative so much of which they had been fortunate to share. It included the story of how they came to be in Australia and in this particular place. I didn't know it at that time but their life narrative encouraged me to write a book in which their narrative became the first chapter together with life narratives I created for my late wife and her parents and eventually myself. I did this to honour their lives and to fulfil a need for myself. But I also did it so that my children and their children will understand the background to their own existence..
The house and garden in Narrawallee and the local beach which I walk on every day hold memories of past visits. Each time I come I ponder the arc of my life accessing vivid memories and triggering feelings that cannot be gained in any other place helping me make sense of a life trajectory that could never have been anticipated back in 1993 when I first visited this place. The ticking of the kitchen clock marking the passage of time, the cool shady veranda and garden full of flowers and the distinctive sounds of the Australian birds, and walks on the mile long, near deserted beach, provide wonderful spaces to think about the past and imagine the future. In the past week I have spent a lot of time reflecting on these things. Thanks to the internet I was able to share a short post on the theme of life stories and my visit to my wife’s friend in the #creativeHE forum. What I said must have struck a chord as a number of people related their own experiences to what I had said. And so this sequence of events that I have experienced, connected and given meaning to in this way became the catalyst for this issue of Lifewide Magazine in which we aim to explore the idea of life stories and narratives and how they help us connect up, make sense of and communicate the events, experiences and circumstances of our lives, and help us explain who we are and how we have become who we are, to ourselves and to others.
In this issue we are interested in how, why and when we create life stories and narratives for ourselves, or when we help others to create their life narratives, and the effects and consequences of engaging in such acts. We are interested in the means by which narratives are recorded and communicated - what technologies, if any, are used to bring a story to life and enable it to be shared. We are fascinated by what it means to create such narratives and we are interested in how places, people, objects, events or situations stimulate the need or desire to reflect on and recount our stories and narratives. We are interested in how the creation of our life narrative formed in the past, influences our present and our future, our sense of identity and who we would like to become.
With so much technology available to us recording our stories through text, photos, audio and video has never been easier. But with this new capability comes responsibility. I read somewhere that parents need to be the digital record keepers for our children. In the context of life narratives perhaps we have a responsibility to provide our children with our own narrative – we are the only one who knows our complete story. Equally perhaps, we have a social responsibility to help others – our parents and friends, to create their own narratives.
If you would like to contribute an article please email me [email protected]
Deadline for articles is December 15th 2018
COMMISSIONING EDITOR
Life Stories & Narratives
There are no stories more meaningful than our own biography, but unless you are a famous person its likely that your story, in all its fantastic richness, will die with you. Think of all the billions of stories that have been lost in the history of mankind. The stories we create about our life, serve many purposes but perhaps the most important is to reveal to ourselves and others that our life has meaning. Creating a life narrative is a deeply ecological phenomenon in the sense that it fundamentally connects us to our past life and to our interactions with our world and gives our very existence meaning. It involves us selecting the important moments, circumstances, people and relationships in our life, making stories about these things then connecting and weaving the stories into a narrative to create the meaning that is our life. Of course there are good and bad experiences and lots of loose ends,lost opportunities and unfulfilled ambitions, but our life narrative is a heuristic to help us make sense of and value our life as a journey. Our life story captures our appreciation of our own existence in the great story of humanity.
We tell the stories of our life to our children to illustrate some lesson we feel is important and in this process we reveal to them the person we were and are. We might draw on our experiences in conversations with friends and with colleagues at work again to illustrate a point and to convey to them the sort of person we would like them to see, and perhaps hide the stories that are not so complementary or conflict with the identity we prefer to project. As we weave our stories into a larger narrative we integrate different parts of our lives. The narrative becomes the means to integrate the different dimensions of our lifewide experiences into the journey that is our, past, present and evolving future.
The importance of life stories and narratives to us and to the people who know and love us was brought home to me recently. Indeed, this story is the inspiration for this issue of the magazine. Two weeks before writing this introduction a friend of my wife’s whom she had known and kept in touch with for over 30 years, was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that means she will completely lose her memory in the space of only a few months. Our first thought was about unfairness and cruelty especially as she is a mother of two teenage boys but these were soon replaced with what practical and emotional support can we give her and her family. My wife is really good at providing such support and she was quickly into action. After giving it some thought and thinking about the circumstances I decided to offer to help her write her life story if it was something she wanted to do. She did, and a few days later I spent a couple of hours listening to her with a digital recorder. For me it was a humbling, sometimes painful but often uplifting experience. For her, I felt it gave her enormous comfort to know that she had told her story in the way she wanted to. It was a privilege to listen to her telling story knowing that she trusted me to communicate it when she could not do so for herself anymore. What struck me was the multiplicity of stories that she wove together in a life well lived and how certain experiences or defining moments shaped in a profound way her personality and her future life.
As I reflected, I began to realise that ‘places’ can be a significant factor in the creation of life stories. As I write this short introduction, I am making my annual visit to my mum in Australia on the south NSW coast. In her mid 90’s she has lived here for the last 30 years. It’s a peaceful place called Narrawallee and she lives in a small bungalow just 10mins walk from a beach that uplifts your soul when you walk on it. I have come here many times in the last 25 years and it is inevitable we talk about our past when we meet as well as sharing all the family news. As I talk about what my children and grandchildren are doing I know I am recounting my current life stories and I am conscious of the way I tell each story and what meaning I am trying to convey. I show her photos on my smart phone and these artefacts stimulate more stories. She is clearly a catalyst for the creation and telling of my unfolding narrative.
A few years ago,when my father was alive, I sat with them in this kitchen and,with the aid of a digital recorder,I 'made' them talk about their life, recording their stories and their life narrative so much of which they had been fortunate to share. It included the story of how they came to be in Australia and in this particular place. I didn't know it at that time but their life narrative encouraged me to write a book in which their narrative became the first chapter together with life narratives I created for my late wife and her parents and eventually myself. I did this to honour their lives and to fulfil a need for myself. But I also did it so that my children and their children will understand the background to their own existence..
The house and garden in Narrawallee and the local beach which I walk on every day hold memories of past visits. Each time I come I ponder the arc of my life accessing vivid memories and triggering feelings that cannot be gained in any other place helping me make sense of a life trajectory that could never have been anticipated back in 1993 when I first visited this place. The ticking of the kitchen clock marking the passage of time, the cool shady veranda and garden full of flowers and the distinctive sounds of the Australian birds, and walks on the mile long, near deserted beach, provide wonderful spaces to think about the past and imagine the future. In the past week I have spent a lot of time reflecting on these things. Thanks to the internet I was able to share a short post on the theme of life stories and my visit to my wife’s friend in the #creativeHE forum. What I said must have struck a chord as a number of people related their own experiences to what I had said. And so this sequence of events that I have experienced, connected and given meaning to in this way became the catalyst for this issue of Lifewide Magazine in which we aim to explore the idea of life stories and narratives and how they help us connect up, make sense of and communicate the events, experiences and circumstances of our lives, and help us explain who we are and how we have become who we are, to ourselves and to others.
In this issue we are interested in how, why and when we create life stories and narratives for ourselves, or when we help others to create their life narratives, and the effects and consequences of engaging in such acts. We are interested in the means by which narratives are recorded and communicated - what technologies, if any, are used to bring a story to life and enable it to be shared. We are fascinated by what it means to create such narratives and we are interested in how places, people, objects, events or situations stimulate the need or desire to reflect on and recount our stories and narratives. We are interested in how the creation of our life narrative formed in the past, influences our present and our future, our sense of identity and who we would like to become.
With so much technology available to us recording our stories through text, photos, audio and video has never been easier. But with this new capability comes responsibility. I read somewhere that parents need to be the digital record keepers for our children. In the context of life narratives perhaps we have a responsibility to provide our children with our own narrative – we are the only one who knows our complete story. Equally perhaps, we have a social responsibility to help others – our parents and friends, to create their own narratives.
If you would like to contribute an article please email me [email protected]
Deadline for articles is December 15th 2018