Memoirs and Memories

Over the last seven weeks, I’ve been writing my memoir.  As I tell my relatives and close friends about this new endeavor of mine, I get a few distinct reactions.  The majority says: “Wow, you’re brave!  I can’t wait to read it”.  To which I laugh nervously in response to their enthusiasm because, yes indeed, I am pouring my mind and heart on those pages.  And while I am not yet ready to share, I know that the day will necessarily come when I will release my ‘story’ into the world.  “Can’t wait !” V. ironically replies.  But a notable minority reacts differently, not quite daring to ask: “What is so important in your life that you think that people will be interested to read it?”  There is not a lot that I can answer to that.  I say: “Well, one day I’ll be a famous philosopher, and then people will read my memoir of how I got to become who I am…”  That satisfies them, yet it pinpoints how ‘ordinary lives’ are perceived as ‘unimportant’ as a subject of study or interest.  I mean: our memories are important, if only to ourselves and our family, but hopefully as a medium through which the ‘being human’ is captured in all its glorious details.

 

It’s with these observations in mind that I read Peter’s last blog ‘Orality and History’.  Throughout, I felt that memoir writing is – or clearly can be located – in between the written narrative art of history – focused on groups and trends – and the oral traditions of family lore.  Just last week, I spent several days interviewing my relatives – my book’s characters – to try to understand their lives, their motivations, the very impulses that caused them to live and act the way they did. I must confess that I wasn’t as objective and methodical as the oral historian Peter describes.  My questions and my notes were shaped by my own story; the narrative that is currently taking shape.  But I still just tried to make them talk, and it was surprisingly hard to get them talking (especially the men).  Yet we talked about many things that I didn’t know, and I felt – within those conversations – an intimacy that is so rarely present in our lives that when it does arise, we can feel a shift in the air.

 

Most people do not see how precious their life experiences actually are. We take our past for granted: our life lessons as just ‘natural events’ in our lives.  Who would dare to care about how one voted in the Quebec referendum (for sovereignty – 25 years ago)?  Having participated in these conversations just recently, I can understand how amazed Peter is to have met an oral historian – in Maine no less.  Because, a third reaction that I am also getting a lot is: “Oh, I would want to do that too!” but instead of rushing to the computer to work their story out in words, they proceed to tell me all about their lives.

 

I would argue that, for all the people I interviewed recently, none will make the effort to ‘literally’ put their lives into written narratives, yet they all could talk about their lives with a relatively high degree of introspection: even my Grandpa who, at 81, came alive in front of my eyes talking about the car he bought just a few days before wooing my grandmother.  If only we -society – could capture orally what they – everyone – have to say, everyone could then be included in History as we currently understand the discipline.  Because I agree that there are a few missing links between the macro-level – of nation-building for example – and the fact that it took my grandpa to drive the truck that brought the iron beams to the construction sites.  This link – this gem of both my personal and ‘national’ history – I just found out, but even this micro-level is too specific for me to see how ‘the past’ emerged from within the lived experiences of millions of men and women.  It would be a very interesting thing to do, and I wonder – Dear Oral Historian – if that is the goal of your discipline to do something like that?  Could we, by taking/tagging/grouping the oral account of millions of people, ‘hear’ the narrative of our society emerge?

 

Here I am, in the midst of searching my past, interviewing my relatives for their memories, for the moments in our lives when we ‘became’ who we are.  And yet, this formation of our identities cannot be taken in isolation from the History of our society.  And while I do think that I lived a pretty interesting life – at the micro-level -, the real fascinating bits are the ones in which I can see the bigger processes of History appear in my little individual choices.

 

In the end, my life might be only one unique expression of what it means to be alive.  Yet, I capture, abide by and react to norms, habits and the conditions of a much broader social environment.  My reflections, my inner world, is – at once – unique and part of this shared narrative of History, made especially vivid because it so recently unfolded…  I am not sure yet how to link all my ideas and experiences in a compelling – interesting to read – narrative, but the process of discovery itself is awe-inspiring.

 

So, can memoirs – and subsequently the macro-analysis of memoirs – be the missing link?  I believe so! What do you think?

On purposefulness

A certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them.  Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities.

Somebody once explained to me that the difference in social attitude that distinguishes North Americans from Europeans, can best be summarised by considering the different ways in which representatives from these two cultures attempt to explain certain feature of their society.  Europeans, it is said, explain the present in terms of the past: “we do it this way because …”, is followed by some history, providing the antecedent causal story.  North Americans, by contrast, are said to explain the present in terms of the future: “we do it this way because …”, is followed by setting out some purpose, the pursuit of which orientates both current and subsequent actions.

I’m not really persuaded by this story of alleged cultural difference.  Among people I know, conservatism is common but evenly spread on both sides of the Atlantic, and pragmatism, although rarer, also exists on both continents.  Nonetheless, while dismissing the simplistic generalisation, it is worth noting that the character of this social attitude is important, since it helps shape many of our values and major life decisions.   Do we try to stay true to something in our past – whether personal, ancestral or cultural – or is our loyalty tied up with some aims and objectives that are not yet achieved, but that we are working towards?

At one extreme, there are people who believe in fate or destiny: we can but fulfil what was determined for us before we were born.  Our future is simply the unfolding of some genetic or astrological blueprint, from which there is no escape.  At the other extreme is a form of radical existentialism, which says that every morning we start our lives anew, and each choice we make, while it might be influenced or shaped by the past, should be a point of radical departure.   Most of us do not inhabit these extremes: we value the past, and acknowledge its influence on us, but we also want to be free to choose the most important goals that we work towards in life.

I think – indeed, I hope – that I am not greatly influenced by or beholden to the past. I find the study of history interesting, not least because it helps to show – in a precautionary way – the extent to which so much of contemporary life is held tight by the clutch of tradition, and the extent to which so many of my contemporaries are dulled by the ‘anæsthetic effect of custom’ (to borrow a phrase from Marcel Proust).  In the main, many of us, by default, avoid becoming the masters and mistresses of our own destiny, too easily satisfied with keeping the world more or less as we inherited it from our parents.  Today is much like yesterday, tomorrow will be much like today.

I am increasingly tempted by the pragmatist extreme, to want to make the world anew every day.  My conviction is growing that habit is death.   Last January, I visited the Kilauea volcano in Hawai’i, which has subsequently entered a phase of more vigorous eruption (please note, logicians consider post hoc ergo propter hoc to be a fallacy).  The hard, black volcanic rock that covers the lava belt, which runs from the crater to the sea, appears as ancient as the earth itself, but is in fact only thirty-five years old at most.  Walking across this lava, I realised that the earth’s crust is, in places, being made anew every day.  The creation story is still not over.

Living each day without regard for anything that went before seems impractical.  We cannot make everything new every day, just as we cannot re-build a boat at sea all at once.  We need to work gradually, one part of our lives at a time, holding some things stable while other things are changed.   The question is whether we work hard to re-fashion and improve the major things – our character, our values, our friendships, life goals – or whether we limit ourselves to the superficial – our clothes and hair, our phone company, the music in our earphones.

In his writings on ethics, Aristotle – cited above – observes that there are some activities that are valuable in themselves and others that are valuable because they are means by which to achieve a more valued goal.  When we pursue a course of action that leads towards a desired outcome, the outcome is better than the actions that led us to it.   Well, maybe.  There are some cases – simple examples, like queuing to buy a ticket, and life changing examples, like under-going chemotherapy – where no-one would willingly undertake the action unless it held out the promise of a benefit upon completion.  There are many means that are valued only for being means.

But there are other parts of our lives, where the means and the ends are entwined in more complicated fashion, where the pleasure and the value come from the pursuit of the goal as much as from the achievement of the goal.  The pleasures of exercise, or work, of friendship, are not to be found in some elevated teleological purpose, but in the activity itself.  These are goals that cannot ever be achieved, completed, perfected or consumed: they are like the horizon line, ever receding as we make progress towards it; they are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the absence of which detracts nothing from the beauty of refracted light.

To put this another way, the problem with goals or purposes is that either we achieve them – in which case our lives are left bereft of meaning, without challenge and structure – or we fail to achieve them – in which case we are left unhappy.   To be purposeful, in the truest sense, not only do we need to set our own goals, but we need to set some important goals that are unattainable, whose value lies in their pursuit rather than their achievement.   We need to create some of our world anew every day and we need to be sure never to complete it.

The seventh day can only be a fast lane to unhappiness.