We are all our own book: we have the ability to rewrite ourselves, to emphasize our identity and even to rip out pages that are not used, that hurt and that give unnecessary weight to the novel of our lives. Remember to leave the last page, blank, so that we always have the opportunity to start new chapters?
Borges said that there are those who cannot imagine a world without birds, there are those who cannot imagine a world without water, and there are those who cannot conceive of a world without books, something that certainly teach us all the books we have already read. and what is somehow part of the substrate of our personality is that we are all stories. To exist is to be part of a magical fabric in which we become the authors of a thread that passes and is written every day.
- “The adventure of life is to learn.
- The purpose of life is to grow.
- The nature of life is to change.
- “-William Ward-.
However, and here is one of our most obvious problems, we sometimes think that we are subject to a single narrative line, the classical structure of an introduction, a problem and a resolution. No one has told us that in fact, the book of our lives is not logical, there are chapters that are part of it in half, there are paragraphs that we have to delete to rewrite, and there are many pages that need to be deleted for the plot to make more sense.
On the other hand, we must always keep in mind that the book of our lives has a complete meaning only for one person: ourselves. Every experience, every encounter, every decision made, every feeling, caress, emotion and every casual experience has for us a sense of its own that no one else can understand. Logic is in our own chaos, in our own book of disorganized chapters and continuous restarts, we find the best work ever written: ours.
Joan Didion is a well-known writer who is often referred to as “the white whale of American essay. “Today she is 82 years old and she is probably one of the authors who used writing the most for something as desperate as it is interesting at the same time: bringing those close to life to life to life. In December 2003, she and her husband returned from the hospital after seeing their daughter sick when Didion’s husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, suddenly died in the living room.
A few months later, her daughter also lost her life by not overcoming pneumonia. After that, and for 88 days, Joan Didion wrote tirelessly and frantically what would become her best-known book: “The Year of Magical Thought. “Anthropologists define “magic thinking” as the mental attitude with which people come to believe that their thoughts can influence the development of certain events. Joan Didion hoped that her family would be with her again, that she would come back to life.
None of this happened, however, after the publication of this book, the author understood that it was time to begin a new chapter in his life: real, writing had served as catharsis, a means of channeling grief. has continued to move, defiance and for cold times for so many absences, but imposing the vital obligation to continue breathing, to continue advancing in our pages in which, according to her, to find the rhythm of existence in the same way as found in the words and phrases you have written ?.
We speak at first of the importance of always having a few blank pages in our personal book, those perfect and empty sheets are our opportunity to create a future full of new opportunities, in which to pave the way for other stories, new chapters, passionate. and happier.
Every day there is a blank sheet on which you can write your own story.
However, it is not always easy to understand that we have this precious opportunity to repeat history, a traumatic childhood, a family drama, an infidelity or a loss, often make us think that the book of our lives is already finished with this last fatal chapter. .
Here are three strategies to think about that can help us change this vision, this complex perception.
As we age and mature, we realize something very important: that new beginnings are a way to stick together in life and embrace a more real, more tangible happiness in line with our own. courage to write the book we want, which identifies us.
Images courtesy of SIUM and Soizick Meister.