Why (and how) you should write your own biography. -10 reasons with inspiration
Why you should write your own biography.
Why not?
Why you should not write about your biography? When I put myself in your skin, with my mind I can see that your life must be filled with different experiences than mine. Some good some bad, some inspiring some tragic. Whatever it may be If I am a novelist, it would be material for a character in my Moby Dick. So why not? I have no reason to give.
Nobody is going to write it for you.
What are the odd, you are rich and famous so you can hire, an official biography writer to follow you all around the town and write about your grocery shopping and travel to work. Nope, the fact that you are reading now is evidence for that not happening. So if it is a biography, it should be an autobiography. You will have to do your own.
Your life is significant to few people.
Think about it. Although you are not famous your story is significant to everyone in the immediate associate circle of yours, meaning friends and family. They look up to you, they depend on you, and you depend on them. For these people you're the famous person in their lives. How relatively small a circle that would be, still your ideas, and views matter to them. Although ignorant today, if will in the future when there is loss. Hence, write it for them if not for you.
Human thoughts are valuable.
One of the most and only valuable thing is human thoughts. This I do not have to explain as there are many more articles on value in this blog such as this. However, if you're not into journals, autobiography would be a place where, you can write all your life philosophy into. So it becomes the part of the general human knowledge. Do not worry nobody cares. Value of human thought is not immediately apparent most of the time. It is apparent only when it becomes necessary as a real human problem. The problems may not exist now, today. But eventually they will and your biography can be the solution to save some million lives and change the course of the universe.
understand your own journey.
Your journey when you look back from the comfort of the couch may feel chaotic and haphazard and even bizarre. The narrative which goes inside your head all day, makes edits to it day after day, without you even knowing. Making sense of this journey happens when you look back only. Life makes sense only when you look back at it. Trust me it does makes more sense when it is on paper, when in written format.
To see the change.
When things are in chronological order, the time you take to write the autobiography will eventually change your identity. Your current identity as a middle-aged man was not the one prevailed in the past. The ideals about the future have changed over time from a young man with expectations, to a middleman for survival and understanding. You might have quit smoking, and drinking, to feel a little healthy on your decaying body. These things are real human problems associated with change. Notice when you start writing, it leaves opportunity to observe the changing life
To remember what happened
Human memory is notoriously unreliable. At one moment you will have a thought, and it will be forgotten forever, in the next moment. At one moment you would be sad, and without even you are knowing it, will change into jealousy and happiness in the afternoon. Unless you think backwards into your day, and week and months, years and decades. Unless you write them down, your beautiful thoughts, you will have a very short story, which you say to yourself right now. Which can be utterly wrong when taken as a whole. So, write it down and see how surprisingly strange to come back to your past self 10 years in the future.
To discover a personal philosophy
Life is a struggle. I am sure you have gone through some critical points in your life where you just went from believing in one philosophy to another. At one time, you thought it's all about studying hard and getting a good career. Another time, it wasn't enough, you looked at family life and thought that would make you happy and content. In another time you thought, well nothing matters, past or future, only what is happening now is what is there to it. But where is now? How can I make sense of it if not for the past and future. These may seem obvious stupid village philosophers' questions. But if you read a little bit of any philosopher, you will see, they also followed same thought pattern.
why your own biography is unique
Your story is unique. I haven't lived through yours. It deserves to be written. Do you know how difficult it was for an ordinary man born in 100 ACE to write about their lives. For one thing the literacy rate wasn't good. And the stationary material was hard to find. Today it is very easy, you can write down your unique experience in a blog, in paper, or even in a vlog. Yes, all the boring stuff that you do make sense. Do not everyone else to go "Woooow..." when you say what you have to say. As long as it matters to you it doesn't matter what others think.
Mistakes and achievements
Your mistakes and achievements both deserve mentions in your autobiography. Mistakes as you can look back and organize your system, so they do not recur in the future. They function as learning points. Achievement as you often forget that you ever had them in a short period of days to weeks. But when Saturday afternoon, when you sit at your desk to write your own autobiography you will realize, the life you have lived is not bad at all. It's just you forgot to celebrate your small wins and praise yourself. No harm done with a little bit of ego if it makes you smile for a while, while nobody is watching.
How are you going to write your autobiography.
Set aside a time and a place, and a book, pen and paper. Keep them ready easily visible and available on your working table where you often come and sit. Fantasize about what you are going to write, during normal working hours. Start from somewhere before you sleep. Start about one day four decades ago, where you woke up in the morning after your older siblings who happened to be nowhere to found. Talk about the strange tumult of squirrels which woke you up from your comfortable baby sleep. Talk about the little bag of Jambu, (a tropical fruit) that your brother and sister kept by your bed a simple act of love that you never told them about that you still remember. Maybe they deserve to hear that you still value their childish acts of kindness, which filled your heart with human compassion all these years. Maybe it is time to give them a call.
There is no hard and fast rule where you write. What you write and in which device. As long as you add a little story day after day, until it shapes into something which you will be proud of in a decade. Think about it as a project for a decade, not something to be finished in months.
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