Quote by Richard White, Remembering Ahana
Lives are not stories. A day, a month, a year, or a lifetime has no plot. Our experiences are only the raw stuff of stories. The beginnings of our lives are arbitrary; usually their endings come too soon or too late for any neat narrative conclusions.We turn our lives into stories, and, in doing so, we can stop them where we choose. Our stories do in a small way what memoirs and autobiographies do on a grander scale: they allow a self-fashioning that gives remembered lives a coherence that the day-to-day lives of actual experience lack. History, of course, also imposes coherence, but the historian works will less malleable stuff than memory. Memoirs are seamless; good histories disrupt.
Summary
This quote emphasizes that while our lives are filled with experiences, they are not neatly structured like stories. Instead, our experiences serve as the raw material for storytelling. The quote suggests that the beginnings and endings of our lives are often arbitrary and do not follow a predefined narrative structure. We have the power to turn our lives into stories, allowing us to end them where we choose and create a sense of coherence and meaning. Memoirs and autobiographies similarly serve the purpose of giving our remembered lives a sense of coherence, whereas history, although it imposes some coherence, is less flexible in shaping our narratives.
Topics
Storytelling
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