If you wrote your autobiography, what would it say?
We'll come back to that question.
Over the last four hundred years or so, a number of Americans have penned their own stories, from factual autobiographies such as Richard Wright’s Black Boy and Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi to autobiographical novels such as Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel.
When it comes to telling their own stories, writers have an advantage because they are masters of putting events and thoughts to words. Still, a writer's primary occupation typically is, well, writing, not engaging in dramatic deeds out in the world. Perhaps this is why the best-known autobiographies have come from writers who had other careers. For example, Life on the Mississippi, as the title suggests, recounts Twain’s career as a steamboat pilot. The author of what is perhaps America’s greatest autobiography, Benjamin Franklin, was, of course, much more than a writer: his life as a printer, philanthropist, scientist, and statesman gave Franklin much to write about and reflect on—although he died before finishing his book and thus never got to his contributions to the American Revolution.
In any case, an autobiography is only as good as its subject matter (although it's also much more than that--perhaps a subject for another column). F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say." Fitzgerald didn't write an autobiography, but his words are relevant to this genre. When we read an autobiography, we expect the author to share something meaningful with us. What exactly that "something meaningful" is, though, can vary. Richard Wright provided insights into, among other things, the experience of growing up in a strict family atmosphere (not always conducive to the creative writer), and Twain gave us a comical, yet marvelously insightful glimpse into the mentality of youth--or, to put it in terms of a timeless literary theme, the discrepancy between innocence and experience. In his account of his early days as a "Cub-pilot," for example, he relates the experience of being awakened to take his station on the boat:
“Here was something fresh—this thing of getting up in the middle of the night to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this new phase of it.”
As both of these examples illustrate, the subject matter of one's life story need not be anything exotic. Indeed, in many cases, its chief value may be its familiarity. One of my favorite lines from a movie is this one from C. S. Lewis in the movie Shadowlands: "We read to know we're not alone." Anyone who has felt the pinch (or worse) of restraint in a family with values different from their own will appreciate Wright's account, just as those of us who have matured, but still remember the innocent perspective of our adolescence will chuckle knowingly at Twain's story. There's value in telling this kind of story about our lives. Lewis was right. We are not alone.
There is also value in telling the inspirational story, especially when the author started where some of us already are. I'll have more to say about this kind of autobiography in some future columns on the autobiographical writings of Franklin and Frederick Douglass.
Finally, there is value in simply telling one's own life story from one's own perspective. In Walden, a kind of autobiography since it tells of Henry David Thoreau's experience living at Walden Pond for two years, Thoreau wrote, "I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else I knew as well." A lengthy account of one's own life might seem self-indulgent until we realize, as Thoreau did, that we know ourselves better than we know anyone else and an account of a single person's life is, in itself, worthwhile as a study of human nature.
I promised to return to my opening question: "If you wrote your autobiography, what would it say?"
Even if you don't plan to write an autobiography, this question is useful, even inspirational, because it forces us to do some reflection. What do we want to say to the world? More importantly, what do we want to do with our lives? Franklin, in his Poor Richard's Almanack, wrote, "If you wou'd not be forgotten As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
With a new year ahead of us, we have an opportunity to think and act in new ways. We can reflect on what we want to say to the world--in an autobiography, perhaps, or simply in our daily remarks and actions--and we can "do things worth the writing." Now, with a month left to go before New Year's Day and, for many of us, some downtime for thinking and planning, we can prepare to "live deliberately" (to quote Thoreau again). Let me share a little exercise that I have done. Perhaps it will work for you.
We typically think of an autobiography or resume as something we write after we have done the things described there. An "aspirational" autobiography or resume is different: it includes things we want to have done. Let me be clear: I am certainly not suggesting that you make up some impressive achievements to pad your resume and then pass it off as the real thing. Rather, I am suggesting that you think deeply about what you would like for your resume or autobiography to say and then use this aspirational document to guide and inspire your life so that you can realize your aspirations and make the document, like your dreams, come true.
What would a story of your life say? That's up to you.