INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE FIVE OF THE SEVEN PART SERIES: THE STORIES BEHIND MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS
Have you ever remembered something that happened years ago and suddenly realised there was a story in it?
It might have been an ordinary day, an unexpected encounter or something that happened while you were doing something completely different. At the time, you probably thought very little about it. You dealt with whatever was happening, carried on with your day and eventually forgot about it.
Then, perhaps years later, something reminds you of the incident. You start thinking about it again, remember a few more details and find yourself smiling. You may even tell someone about it. Before long, you realise that you have a story worth sharing.
That has happened to me many times.
When I look back over the fifty-one stories in my book, Memories Are Made of This, I can see that many did not begin as stories at all. They were simply experiences that became memories. It was only afterwards that I recognised there was something worth writing about.
Living the experience comes first
When we are in the middle of an experience, we are usually more concerned with what is happening than with how we might describe it later.
If something unexpected happens, we react. If we are travelling, we concentrate on getting where we are going. If we meet someone interesting, we have a conversation. We do not normally stop to consider whether the incident might make a good chapter in a book.
Nor should we.
Some of the best experiences happen because we are not thinking about anything other than the moment itself. We are simply getting on with life.
I have travelled through some remarkable places, met people from different backgrounds and found myself in situations that I could never have anticipated. At the time, I was not collecting material for a book. I was enjoying myself, solving problems, making decisions and occasionally wondering what I had got myself into.
It was only later that some of those experiences took on a different meaning.
The moment when a memory returns
Memories have an interesting habit of resurfacing when we least expect them.
A photograph might remind us of a holiday. A familiar place might bring back an incident that happened there many years earlier. A conversation might trigger a memory of someone we have not seen for decades.
Sometimes the memory arrives almost fully formed. On other occasions, we remember only a small part of what happened and have to think back to reconstruct the circumstances.
I find that one memory often leads to another. I might begin by remembering a particular journey, then recall the people who were with me, something that happened along the way and perhaps an entirely separate incident that I had not thought about for years.
It is rather like opening an old filing cabinet. You go looking for one document and discover several others that you had forgotten were there.
The difficulty is deciding which memories are worth developing into stories.
Finding the interesting part
Not every memory automatically makes a good story.
Some experiences are important to us personally but may not be particularly interesting to anyone else. Others seem quite insignificant until we start looking more closely at what happened.
The interesting part might be an unexpected twist, an unusual person, a funny misunderstanding or a decision that led to an outcome nobody could have predicted.
Take my story Farm Visit, for example.
In October 1980, I visited a farm near West Nicholson, in what was then Rhodesia. It was an enjoyable holiday involving wildlife, horse riding, snorkelling and exploring the countryside. There were plenty of interesting things to remember.
But one of the incidents that stayed with me was much simpler.
We were standing on the back of a Land Rover while being taken on a wildlife safari. My friend was pointing out the animals as we travelled along. At one point, he shouted, "Duck!"
I turned around and asked, "Where?"
A tree branch promptly hit me in the head.
At the time, it was an uncomfortable experience. Looking back, it became one of the amusing details that helped make the whole visit memorable.
The story was not really about being hit by a tree. It was about the holiday, the people, the setting and the unexpected moments that made the experience enjoyable. The incident simply provided a rather memorable ending to that particular part of the adventure.
Sometimes a small detail is all that is needed to bring an entire experience back to life.
Hindsight gives us a different perspective
One of the advantages of looking back is that we can see things differently from the way we saw them at the time.
An incident that seemed embarrassing might become funny. A difficult decision might become easier to understand. Something that appeared unimportant might turn out to have influenced what happened afterwards.
In my story Civil Engineering, I look back at a period in my working life when I was involved in construction projects in South Africa. I had originally wanted to pursue civil engineering, but the experience gradually helped me recognise that it was not the career I wanted.
There were practical reasons for this. I liked building things, but I was less enthusiastic about moving from one construction site to another. I was also thinking about the longer-term implications of that kind of working life.
Eventually, I left the profession and moved into computing.
At the time, I was making decisions about my future. Looking back, I can see that this was an important turning point. It was not necessarily obvious while it was happening, but the experience helped me find a direction that suited me better.
That is one of the things I enjoy about writing retrospectively. We can describe what happened, but we can also explain what we understand about it now that we might not have appreciated at the time.
Reconstructing the story
Once I have recognised that an experience might make a worthwhile story, the next task is to work out how to tell it.
I usually start by remembering where I was, when it happened and who was involved. Then I try to recall the sequence of events.
What was I doing? What happened next? Was there a conversation that mattered? Was there something unexpected? How did the experience end?
Sometimes I remember the details quite clearly. On other occasions, I need to look at photographs, old documents or other information to help put things in context.
I also have to be careful not to confuse what I remember with what I might now assume happened. Memories are not perfect recordings of events. Over time, details can become blurred, and it is easy to fill gaps without realising it.
I would rather leave out a minor detail than invent something to make a story sound better.
The important thing is to tell the experience honestly and give the reader enough information to understand what happened.
The importance of people and small details
When I think about the stories I have written, I often find that the people involved are just as important as the events themselves.
A friend who was there at the time, a stranger who offered help, a colleague who said something unexpected or a family member who shared an experience can all become part of the story.
Sometimes it is a particular comment or reaction that I remember most clearly. Other times, it is simply the way someone behaved.
Small details can also make a difference. The weather, the surroundings, the journey, the sound of something happening or the appearance of a particular place can help bring a memory back.
I do not need to describe every detail, but I want readers to have enough information to picture the situation.
After all, I am not simply recording that something happened. I am trying to explain what it was like to be there.
Why writing memories down matters
There is another reason why I think it is worth turning memories into stories. They do not always stay with us indefinitely.
We may remember an experience quite clearly today, but ten years from now some of the details might have disappeared. We might remember the general event but forget the names, the conversations or the small incidents that made it memorable.
Photographs help, but they have their limitations. They can show us where we were and who was there, but they cannot always explain what happened before or afterwards.
Writing a story gives us an opportunity to preserve those details. It also allows us to share them with other people, rather than keeping them in our own memories.
That was one of the reasons I decided to bring together the experiences in Memories Are Made of This. I had accumulated memories across Australia, South Africa and Britain, and I thought some of them deserved to be recorded.
The result was not an autobiography or a chronological account of my life. It was a collection of fifty-one individual stories, each describing an experience that had stayed with me for one reason or another.
Sometimes the story only appears afterwards
I think the most interesting part of this process is that we do not always know when a story is being created.
We might be enjoying a holiday, dealing with an awkward situation, meeting someone for the first time or simply going about our daily business. We may have no idea that the experience will still be remembered many years later.
It is only when we look back that we recognise its value.
And perhaps that is something worth remembering as we go about our lives. Not every day needs to be extraordinary, and not every experience needs to have a particular purpose.
Sometimes it is enough to enjoy what is happening, take notice of the people around us and remember a few of the details.
Because somewhere among those ordinary experiences, there may be a story waiting to be told.
We just might not recognise it until we look back.
About the author
Gregory Mark Haynes
Author | Storyteller | Speaker
Real stories. Real people. Real life.
#GregoryMarkHaynesAuthor
Article themes
#MemoriesAndMoments
