I just finished putting finishing touches to my next book. Don’t be impressed; it’s not what you think. Which reminds me: have you read my recent book It’s Not What You Think? Anyhow, getting back to my new book: it was the easiest and most fun-filled book to write, but more than that, it wasn’t my idea, not the concept, not the content. How about that! And furthermore, it is a book anyone can write, and by that I mean you, your spouse, your siblings, your children, your anyone.
On my 70th birthday last year, our son Saqib gave me a gift. At first I went, Oh boy! He has put me to work. It was a one-year subscription to StoryWorth, whereby every Monday, I would be receiving an email with a prompt to write a story. StoryWorth would then upload it on their website in my account. At the end of the year, the stories would be compiled in a book and Saqib and I would receive a copy. Additional copies would be available for purchase, a print-on-demand model. The prompts were provided by Saqib, which he had uploaded into my StoryWorth account.
As I started receiving the prompts each week, I realized that I was telling stories I had never told; not to my children, not to my husband, not to my grandchildren. There just hadn’t been an opportunity or incident that would spark a “This reminds me of what happened to me when I was a little girl.” Besides, being an introvert most of my life, I wasn’t into story telling anyhow. But here I was, telling stories such as: the craziest thing that happened to me, childhood memories of my mother, a keepsake from my father, life’s greatest surprise, where I vacationed as a child, the most terrifying thing that happened, my biggest regret, if I had to do it over again, what career would I choose, etc. etc.
Think of the impact. Your children are getting to know you like they never did; your grandchildren are gazing into your childhood; and one day, their children will get to read about their great-grandmother in her own voice. How cool is that!
There is more to it. You can also upload photos. I found myself digging into old albums which my parents had carefully catalogued with my childhood photos, including pictures of their honeymoon. I am now talking late 1940s in Pakistan. How precious is that!
Sometimes I would receive a prompt that I couldn’t work with e.g. what is the funniest thing that happened to you. For the life of me, I still can’t remember. So, I would skip it and pick another prompt, or make up my own prompt e.g. getting befuddled at Notre Dame in Paris, why my grandmother never called my grandfather by his name, how we managed to raise the down payment for our first home, or the day I went broke.
This was a gift from Saqib. But I see it as a gift to him, to our son Asim, their spouses, and our grandchildren. You can guess what each of them is getting for their birthday; and with a promise to pass the book on through the generations and make it mandatory reading. I am hoping that one day, my great-great grandchildren will be fascinated reading about the great-great grandma they never knew, the culture she grew up in, in a far off land, the games she played as a child when there was no TV, no video games, no screens, period; the songs she sang, while they scramble to find them on YouTube or whatever the equivalent would be in their day and age, and why she thought that the now controversial movie Gone with the Wind was the best movie ever . . . . I can see them saying, “What a beautiful wedding tradition. Why don’t we bring it back.” They will look in wonder at the photos of their great-great-great-great grandparents—actually ancestors—the attire, the hairdo, the look— and I can picture them saying, ‘He has Dad’s features.’ Or when they see Mummy’s photo, I bet they will exclaim, “She looks like a movie star! They don’t make women like that anymore.” And then read more stories about her. Or “What is that contraption?” “It’s a sewing machine, silly,” miss know-it-all would say.
I have had fun with it. And since this program allows you to share your stories as you go along, and our children were reading it in real time, they decided to do the same for Khalid. So two months later, Khalid received a birthday gift and now he has been telling stories that will blow you mind. In a nice way, that is. I am finding out stuff about him I never knew. The power of prompts at play.
So my dear readers, tell your stories and preserve them. You can write, dictate into your iPhone and have voice recognition transcribe them, video them. . . .whatever tool you use, just do it. Your stories will live on long after you. And everyone has a story to tell. Once you start telling one story, it will open the windows and doors to more. Our lives are more than our C.V.s, or the epitaph on our tombstone. Tell your stories.
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and
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