Just recently a friend of mine and I were talking about how life should be documented in montages. This revelation came up because we discussed how we rarely remember the good things in a year because the challenges and the hardships and the suckiness usually takes most of the room.
Think about it. Wouldn't it be nice to have a video montage (complete with appropriate soundtrack of course) of all the times you were happy and had fun and enjoyed yourself for each year? I guess it would be the tech-y version of a scrapbook.
But then, I kept thinking and started looking seriously at this (as I am prone to do). What kind of disservice would it be if all the challenges and bad times were glossed over for a feel-good video mixtape. I mean, sure, I'd like to forget a couple of years. I'd like to forget them for the heartbreak and frustration and stress that have accompanied them. But what kind of person would I be without them? I know it's cliche but I wouldn't be who I am today had not those sucky things happened.
I suppose this whole fascination is one of the things that draws me to historical research. Writing and studying history is always colored with this kind of debate. Much of historical writing (current scholars included) focuses on a highlight reel of events to present a solidly argued picture. Wouldn't a complete picture with the tiny nuances, even the nuances that would undermine the original argument be more fair to the reader? But also, wouldn't the tiny nuances overload the mind and understanding?
We live in a society run by storytelling and when it comes down to it, history, much like the way we view our own lives, ends up being told in narrative form. A year in someone's life is not a streamline story. It's got subplots upon subplots and plots that stop mid-run and never complete. It has characters that vary from significant to people who are never to be remembered. And yet, when you see someone at a wedding or at a homecoming and they ask you how you've been, you have a narrative to tell them, your own personal highlight reel.
What's your story?
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