I Am My Own Book: I Rewrite Myself And Add Pages To My Life

We are all our own book: we have the ability to rewrite ourselves, to underline our identity and even to tear out the pages that don’t fit, that hurt and that give unnecessary weight to the soap opera of our lives. Remember to leave the last page blank, so that we always have the opportunity to start new chapters…

Borges said that there are those who cannot imagine a world without birds, there are those who cannot imagine a world without water, and there are those who cannot conceive of a world without books. Something that undoubtedly all the works we’ve read teach us, and that somehow is part of the substrate of our personality, is that we are all stories. To exist is to be part of a magical fabric in which we become authors of a common thread that happens and is written every day.

However, and here comes one of our most obvious problems, we sometimes think we are subject to a single narrative thread, the classic structure of an introduction, a problem, and a resolution. Nobody told us that, in fact, the book of our lives doesn’t have a logical order, there are chapters that are half finished, there are paragraphs that we must erase to rewrite, and there are many pages that it is convenient to eliminate so that the plot makes more sense.

On the other hand, something we should always keep in mind is that the book of our lives only makes complete sense to one person: ourselves. Each experience, each encounter, each decision made, each sensation, caress, shiver and each casualty experienced has a meaning for ourselves that no one else can understand. In our own chaos is logic, in our own book of disorganized chapters and continual new beginnings is found the best work ever written: ours.

When we have no choice but to rewrite the book of our lives

Joan Didion is a well-known writer who is often called “the white whale of the American essay”. She is currently 82 years old and is possibly one of the authors who used writing the most for something as desperate as it was interesting at the same time: getting her loved ones back to life. In December 2003 she and her husband returned from the hospital after seeing their sick daughter when, suddenly, Didion’s husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, suddenly passed away in their living room.

A few months later her daughter also lost her life, after failing to overcome pneumonia. After that, and for 88 days, Joan Didion wrote non-stop and frantically what would be her best-known book: “The Year of Magical Thought”. Both psychiatrists and anthropologists define “magical thinking” as the mental attitude with which people come to believe that their thoughts can influence the development of certain events. Joan Didion hoped that her family would be with her again, that she would come back to life.

None of this happened, however, after the publication of this book, the author understood that it was time to start a new chapter in her life: the real one. Writing had served him as a catharsis, as a means from which to channel mourning. However, life continued to move, out of tune and momentarily cold by so many absences, but imposing the vital obligation to keep breathing, to continue advancing in our pages in which, according to her, “find the rhythm of existence in the same way as the found in the words and phrases he wrote”.

Three ways to rewrite our history to embrace the future

We mentioned at the beginning the importance of always having a few blank pages in our personal book. These perfect and empty sheets are our chance to create a future full of new opportunities, in which to make way for other stories, new chapters, exciting and happier.

However, it is not always easy to understand that we have this valuable opportunity to restart history. A traumatic childhood, some family drama, an infidelity or a loss often make us think that the book of our lives has already ended with this last and fatal chapter.

Here are three strategies to reflect on that can help us change this view, this very complex perception.

Heal yesterday to write better chapters

• The first step we will take in this inner and delicate process is to review our “vital chapters”. We must be able to make a real and objective assessment of the common thread of our lives, of the cycle that goes from childhood to the present moment. It is important that in this first step we avoid looking for or remembering those responsible for each of the things that happened, let’s leave the guilty ones aside. We must focus only on ourselves, on how we see ourselves at each of these stages.
• In this second stage we will assume that changing the past is impossible, but what we can vary is the attitude we have towards yesterday’s moments. It is time to cut the bond of pain, to assume, accept, forgive, and above all, heal our present “I” from the wounds of the past.

• The third stage of this journey is undoubtedly the most special: we must add blank pages to the book of our lives. Something like this can be achieved in many ways, because we are talking about new beginnings, the opportunity to experiment and allow ourselves new things: new friends, new projects, new surroundings, hobbies…

As we grow older and mature, we realize something very important: that new beginnings are a way of staying connected to life, and embracing a more real, more tangible, and in line with our happiness. needs. Let’s gather, therefore, enough courage to write the book we want, which identifies us.

Images courtesy of  SIUM and Soizick Meister.