In our Sunday School class this past week, our very excellent teacher confessed that she was going to struggle to present the assigned lesson. The reason it was going to be difficult for her she said, was because the lesson was covering the Book of Psalms, and there are no stories in Psalms. All of the previous books of the Old Testament included moralistic stories that she could relate to us. She loves lessons where she can tell the stories and then elaborate or have members of the class elaborate on them. The stories generally turn into a discussion and a moral challenge for class members by the end of the class. Her statement immediately struck me as true for everyone. We are not all storytellers but, I believe we are all moved by stories. Then, too, there are those who may not be skilled at telling a story, but they may be skilled at writing stories.
(The most important thing that we should keep in mind is that we all have had and are now having life experiences that could, if written down, be written or told as interesting stories.) Some stories are humorous, some educational or informative, and some relaxing and enjoyable. Stories are no more than experiences that have happened to either ourselves or somebody else. We have been instructed by church leaders to write our histories, but there are very few in the church who are doing it. They may not see their life as a life that would be interesting to others. Yet, as the male star in the movie Australia so wisely stated, “After all, all we really are is our story.” It is a true statement, and it isn’t very often that we can walk away from a modern day movie with a truism. It was supportive of a previous statement I have sometimes used, “When a man dies they bury a book.” It has been suggested that an unrecorded life is a life soon forgotten. Without a documented history, the period of time that we are generally allowed before we are forgotten is merely two generations.
A few years ago, I was asked to speak about family history to a group of young boys in a Teachers quorum. These are 14- and 15-year-olds for the most part, and they had very little or no interest in family history. Before I was introduced, I had no clue as to what I would say to them. As I was introduced, there was an obvious but unspoken, “Oh no!” That was displayed by their expressions. Following the introduction, out of my mouth, but not connected to my brain came the words: “Do you love your fathers and mothers?” They all voiced a positive to that. “Why? Why do you love them?” I asked. There were many reasons voiced. I then asked them if they thought that their father and mother loved their father and mother? For the most part, the answer was yes and for the same reasons. Then I asked them if they thought that same family love extended to each generation that came before them. They said, “probably!” Then I asked them if they knew their grandfather’s first name. Most of the 9 or 10 boys knew their grandfather’s first name, but a few knew them only as grandfather or grandpa. (None of the boys knew anything about their par- ents- grandparents or had even thought that they may have had grandparents.) Those great-grandparents represent their third generation back and they were already forgotten by this generation of Teachers in the Aaronic Priesthood, already forgotten or had never been known by this generation of youth. Unless families talk to their children and/or write about those who came before them, youth will not even be aware of them. They, the forgotten ones, had experiences/stories to tell as well, but they, like many of us, failed to put them down on paper, and as a result, they have become the dead and forgotten ones.
Could it be that they, as well as many members of the church today, have not or are not writing their histories because they do not know what to say nor how to start? If they think that they have to start from the beginning and tell every little thing that has ever happened in their life, in a chronological order—they are wrong. That would be hard and distasteful for even those who are storytellers, hard and probably very boring for those who may be expected to read that history as well.
A personal history should start by writing yourself a short line on a piece of paper about a very interesting thing or event that has happened in your life, an event that you are excited about in the very memory of it. Put that line in a conspicuous place and as you think of another experience, add it to the paper to remind you of it, as well. When you have several of those lines of experiences written down, select one of them to write about. It doesn’t even matter when it happened to you—when you were a child, a young adult or an old person. Don’t feel like what you write has to be perfect. You are just roughing the stories in to begin with. Rereading and possibly rewriting them comes later. As you start writing these experiences, you will be amazed at how many more will start coming to your mind. No one has ever lived in a vacuum nor have they been totally sterile of interesting experiences/stories.
Like our Sunday School teacher, who did not enjoy teaching a lesson without stories, we will not be excited about, nor enjoy writing our histories unless we can make it a storytelling venture, as it should be. In conclusion, start writing your history right now as one life experience/story at a time, whether connected or not, is unimportant. There is great power in writing people’s stories. Points, data, and studies are important, but a good story to illustrate is the very most important factor in readability.”