Beautiful review of this book Ishan. Regarding this comment of your's "This exercise of looking back on one’s life, weighing one event against another, and seeing what is worthy to be written about is one of the hardest things I’ve done." Did you find this process to be worth it? What are your takeaways from the effort? Would you do it again?
Oh wow, that is a big question. It was totally worth it, in that it has resulted in a book that I'm proud of.
But I will caveat that, because it isn't fair to deem one life event worthy than another. I don't know if we can be unbiased judges here. The exercise has definitely allowed me to draw out a clear narrative from my life story, but I fear that I now subconsciously deem some life events as "more significant" than another, and something about that doesn't sit well with me.
As for would I do it again, the answer is probably. I can't tell you when, but it would be so interesting to do it in the future and see how my results differ.
What are your thoughts on this? With all your work with storytelling I'm sure you do this a lot!
I'm intrigued by your fear of giving too much significance to some life events over the other. I'd never considered that might be a negative thing, but I want to reflect on that. What would life be like if I gave no priority weight to my life experiences? As it stands now, I definitely give more weight to some personal stories over others. It seems a natural and unavoidable aspect of human function. If one literally gave zero priority to one's life experiences, it seems we'd be lacking a fundamental ego structure to play the game of life from. It seems that we get to have a say in which stories we choose to focus on, but not whether we have a focus. Isn't there always a focus, either conscious or unconscious? Unconscious focus it seems to me would be more dictated by survival wiring, fears, avoiding threat, etc. Conscious focus allows for the possibility of directing our attention toward creativity, beauty, possibility, relationship, etc. In the absence of intentionally weighting our focus/stories, then someone else will step in and take charge of the focus of our attention for us. That seems to me to describe the default state of western culture. Maybe I'm really going off on a tangent here, but that's what came up thinking about this. I WANT to give intentional weight to some stories over others. It's how I shape my future and create a useful narrative regarding my past.
Beautiful review of this book Ishan. Regarding this comment of your's "This exercise of looking back on one’s life, weighing one event against another, and seeing what is worthy to be written about is one of the hardest things I’ve done." Did you find this process to be worth it? What are your takeaways from the effort? Would you do it again?
Oh wow, that is a big question. It was totally worth it, in that it has resulted in a book that I'm proud of.
But I will caveat that, because it isn't fair to deem one life event worthy than another. I don't know if we can be unbiased judges here. The exercise has definitely allowed me to draw out a clear narrative from my life story, but I fear that I now subconsciously deem some life events as "more significant" than another, and something about that doesn't sit well with me.
As for would I do it again, the answer is probably. I can't tell you when, but it would be so interesting to do it in the future and see how my results differ.
What are your thoughts on this? With all your work with storytelling I'm sure you do this a lot!
I'm intrigued by your fear of giving too much significance to some life events over the other. I'd never considered that might be a negative thing, but I want to reflect on that. What would life be like if I gave no priority weight to my life experiences? As it stands now, I definitely give more weight to some personal stories over others. It seems a natural and unavoidable aspect of human function. If one literally gave zero priority to one's life experiences, it seems we'd be lacking a fundamental ego structure to play the game of life from. It seems that we get to have a say in which stories we choose to focus on, but not whether we have a focus. Isn't there always a focus, either conscious or unconscious? Unconscious focus it seems to me would be more dictated by survival wiring, fears, avoiding threat, etc. Conscious focus allows for the possibility of directing our attention toward creativity, beauty, possibility, relationship, etc. In the absence of intentionally weighting our focus/stories, then someone else will step in and take charge of the focus of our attention for us. That seems to me to describe the default state of western culture. Maybe I'm really going off on a tangent here, but that's what came up thinking about this. I WANT to give intentional weight to some stories over others. It's how I shape my future and create a useful narrative regarding my past.