Telling Our Stories

My brother has entrusted me with a copy of his "memoirs," an account the first part of his life as reflected by the diary he started when he was thirteen. He didn't do it out of vanity but from love, wanting to pass his stories down to his as yet unborn grandchildren. He was inspired to do this because he would have liked to have known more about his predecessors, his grandfathers in particular, but he could find only a few word of mouth stories. We may have our lineages recorded, births and deaths, and a few old pictures, but we don't usually know what our ancestors were really like, what their opinions were, what they struggled with, their idiosyncrasies. We don't know the ways in which we are like them. What little behaviors or habits could they and they alone tell us? What would we like to tell succeeding generations about ourselves? I believe we should all record our stories. In a few generations, there will be curious people who want to know about us and the era of which we are a part.