Looking back, the memoir and personal essay was the first genre I was drawn to when left to my own devices to read beyond a curriculum. I wanted to live through each of the 31 Songs with Nick Hornby, and go Running with Scissors with Augusten Burroughs against my better judgment; more recently, I have been gutted and dazzled by the works of Joan Didion, Annie Dillard and Patti Smith. Increasingly, this is the genre I find myself returning to as I splash around in the waters of a literary career. But it is not just the writer who looks back on the events of the past and arranges them as narrative arcs: we all tell stories about ourselves, to ourselves, and to others. This, I argue, is the way we make meaning of our lives.
In late May, overdressed on a summer afternoon in a neoprene shift, the only dress that I hadn’t stowed away in storage, I sat under a tree eating a blue raspberry ice pop, held absolutely in thrall by Hayden White as he spoke at my university’s commencement ceremony. White popularized the term ‘emplotment', which refers to the process of arranging the events of the past in ways which feel significant to us. All history is written this way, White says, be it personal or collective, and is ultimately subjective to the perspective of the one writing it once we move past the level of facts. Why was I blue in the face—and not just from the ice pop staining my tongue—with excitement as this eighty-year-old man, darling and articulate though he was, delivered a speech? Five years earlier, long before I had any idea that Hayden White had been a professor at Wesleyan University or that I would enter its very gates as a student myself, White’s work on historical narratives was the first big theory that truly captured my interest as a Junior College student. And now, the man whose ideas have had the biggest impact on my academic life was here, right in front of me. Figuratively speaking; I was too ensconced in my shaded spot to leave and even Hayden White is not worth the front-pit jostle in that heat. Further, I was about to embark on a research trip to India for a thesis that, you guessed it, invokes White’s work once again. ‘Life has come full circle,’ I thought, instantly aware of how trite the sentiment was.
Here’s the thing—these are three distinct events: I read Hayden White; Hayden White is speaking at Wesleyan; I will be writing a thesis. It is solely my mind that looks at the past, present, and future, and connects them in a specific way; I now see past reading as an influence on future writing, and the present instance of Hayden White in the flesh as serendipitous and amazing. This is how Hayden White’s speech registers as a moment in my personal history; for the friend sitting next to me whom I hastily hushed for talking during the speech, it was merely a disruption to his afternoon snooze. Hayden White has no idea who I am, nor did Wesleyan University have any idea of what his work meant to me when they asked him to speak. But none of this stops me from seeing the event in precisely the way in which it has taken on significance in my life.
It is this tendency, capability, and necessity of human consciousness that fascinates me. And we don’t just stop there. We first form these links in our heads to make sense of our world, and then in seeking to extend beyond the limits of individual experience, we find ways to share these pieces of information with others. So we tell stories. The anecdote has the power to amuse, scare, bore, and delight others. Most importantly, it can also connect. One of the most fundamental ways we can identify with others is through similar experience. Yet, it is not just how things alike can happen to two or more people, but also that we conceptualize of these events in like ways and pinpoint their significance in our lives, leading us to think of them as important enough to share with other people. We share, someone else responds, “me too!”, and we feel less alone.
As specks in the multiverse, as agents living in the wake of the pantheon of world-historical movers and shakers, we may feel very small indeed. Perspective, humility, and awe are well wrought from this. When seeking ownership, we have only to look to writing our personal histories; this we do even without realizing it. We identify the turning points, periods of greatest triumphs and instabilities, and the key players. It is up to us to configure the quotidian as quixotic—we may alternatively think of a broken teacup as entirely inconsequential or life-shattering; we may see a break-up first as the end of the world, and then later as a pivot or simply a blip, as life, and our story, goes on. Just by tuning into the details of our lives, paying attention its flow, cultivating a sense of place, and engaging with the people who populate our environment, we simultaneously create and live the next great tale.