Our Story

On a postcard my mother once gave me are the words “To read is to empower. To empower is to write. To write is to influence. To influence is to change. To change is to live.” I love these words. I posted them on my bedroom door and I think about them every time I walk in and out of my room.

I like to think about my life as an ever-changing phenomenon. There’s something so comforting about knowing, really knowing, that a life can never become stagnant. Even in it’s daily routine, life is always moving forward. Every instant is a small journey towards the future. Every smile is a small journey towards happiness. Every word said and thought and written is a small journey towards the story of a life.

What will your story be?

I always have that urge to create, even if it’s only thoughts in my own mind, and that urge in and of itself is my creation. I am already making my way through the story of my life. It’s here among the entries of this blog, in the letters and emails I’ve sent and received, in the smiles and hearts of my loved ones. It won’t be a recollection at the end of my life, but a tale that resides in the present, in the here and now. It’s a narrative that grows longer with each passing moment. It’s an account of a life that begins and ends with me.

It’s amazing to think that each of us has our own story that is growing and changing by the second. I am often so consumed by my own, that I forget to read the trails being left by those around me. Every once and a while it will suddenly dawn on me that the person sitting across from the table, across the room, across the world, has their own life story to share with me, and I realize how desperate I am to hear it.

I love to hear other stories. I love when people share their lives and thoughts and experiences, even if it’s not presented in a direct way. I’m always listening for it, really listening. People are often stunned at the information I remember about them, but I make it my mission to do so. I consider it one of the most important things that I do, as though my purpose in life is to someday write the biography of each person that I meet. Maybe in my own way, it is.

I’m so interested in the different kinds of journeys we all take. If I could, I would spend my life traveling around asking people about their lives, listening to their stories. I love how each one is so remarkably individual and yet how they are all so inherently the same. I love how just when I think I have someone completely figured out, they share something with me that changes everything I’ve ever believed to be true about them. People are always so much deeper and more complicated than I give them credit for.

Lately I’ve been finding that every topic I begin to write about changes direction by the time I reach the end of it. If I were a better writer, I would take the point I reach at the end and begin all over again to make a stronger statement, but for now, I’ll just leave my ramblings as they are. They should remain as they are, because like life, they are always moving, always changing, always evolving into something different than I thought they’d be. My story is evolving. Your story is evolving. Our stories are evolving as we change, as we age, as we live.