Quote Anon

Becoming a story sounds romantic, the reality is a lot bleaker… I never met all of my Grandparents due to them passing away before I was born, but I can tell you stories about them that my parents have told me and I can tell you about by Grandfathers who I spent time with…but what you’ll actually receive by listening to my story is my perspective on past memories, told by me and reflected from my past. Often as humans we share memories with an emotional subtitles such as ‘My Grandad was so funny, this one time…’ or ‘ My Nanny was so brave she once…’ – the bleaker reality is that in under one hundred years your stories like those of my great grandparents will be slowly lost. Our lives will become shared memories and stories, a few will become iconic within familiar circles but most will be forgotten.

What does this mean for today? For me it means to live authentically and not for other souls. To delight in my whimsy corner of the world and to ensure that even when I am considered rude, aggressive or perhaps unkind it has purpose and a truth to me.

Often when people recount a memory you shared, you don’t remember quite the same set of events. As time passes memories fade, alter and different people resonate with different aspects of the experience. It doesn’t mean they are wrong, we all just process moments individually, most forgotten altogether.

If this feels heavy or sad relish the joy in the forgotten. Few people will remember the excessive ‘Rachel from Friends’ hair you attempted to pull off in 1996, the tiny blemish that you doused in toothpaste and worried about all night, even we often forget why we worried all night just a few weeks ago…

Time really is a gift and ‘that’s why we call it the present’ – where possible leave people feeling good and often the stories they will recall will be of a similar nature. We can’t control the narrative and nor should we. Day by day we are all doing our best and sometimes in a blink of a moment our happy ever after has unfolded. For those you have loved and are no longer with us, recall the stories you cherish to others and for yourself be kind and don’t worry about the details, no body else will.