As my car comes to a stop at the light, I see a young woman jogging in place, waiting for the white hand to appear in the light box across the street. She waits for it, still keeping her pace and then quickly crosses to the other side.
While standing in line at the grocery store, I notice the man in front of me has on a very large gold ring with engraving all over it. It appears to be a military type ring but can’t tell from my angle. He nods at the clerk and walks toward the sliding doors, a small bag of oranges in hand.
The jogger, the older man, each have a story. I don’t know their story. I only see a small snippet of their day, their lives, as our paths wind in and out, likely to never know what has brought them to the stoplight or the check out stand.
We all have a story. Our histories are unique to us and not one other being has the life experiences we have. What will our lives mean to those who are important to us? Will our stories be told to generations to come? What will the stories include? Will they remember the same details we do or will those bits be left out?
Many of us keep photos or scrapbooks, so some of our lives are there in all their color to be remembered, but we don’t take pictures and scrapbook the days we were disappointed or sad. We don’t write down how we met our spouses to pass on to our great-grandchildren or what our favorite song of all time is. These little pieces of our story, when pieced together make for a very interesting life that is uniquely our own.
What are you doing to share the story of what is “you” with your loved ones? Do you keep a journal? Do you record yourself singing along to the radio? Do you write letters? I think it’s important that our children and their children know what our lives contained, what we were like as a child, a teen-ager, a first-time mother with a tiny baby in our arms. These are our stories and no one else can tell them, share them. Share them.
