Introduction

I first wrote a brief life history 40 years ago at the request of a literary critic who I had shown some of my poetry. I was 17 years old and incredibly naive so it was honest. I was simply telling the truth as I remembered it.

I learned a great lesson about truthful reflection from that first attempt to objectify my thoughts. I had written about an incident 12 years earlier when I remembered killing a rabbit. I felt guilty about this so it was obviously a significant event to me. When my eldest sister Janet read this she reminded me of what actually happened. She and my other sister Margaret were arguing over a pencil. One of them lifted the pet rabbit above her head and threatened to drop it if she didn’t get her pencil back. The rabbit jumped and broke it’s neck.

I was 5 years old and the apple of my mother’s eye. Margaret was 9 Janet 10. They persuaded me to take the blame because I would be less severely punished. It seems I took the blame more fully than intended.

When I was told this I could remember the scene exactly as described. Instantly.

All memory is to some extent fiction. Even when we remember accurately and in accord with what appears to be objectively true there is still a subjective slant overall. None of us see the full picture and sometimes the picture we see is almost entirely distorted by the various conditioning factors, which influence our reflections.

So how do we overcome this when writing about ourselves? Should we get someone else to investigate our lives and report more objectively? Well I think it depends on what one is trying to achieve.

When I wrote my story about killing the rabbit that is what was true for me. It formed the basis of my feelings and thoughts about myself. For me it was the truth. I want to write my story as I remember it for the same reason. I have acted on the basis of what I think and feel not on what is in an abstract way more objective. In my opinion that is true objectivity in terms of honest self-reflection. It involves telling a story that is still in process of change and modification as we learn more about ourselves so it is not consistently the same. It is therefore risky and a bit confusing but nevertheless represents more accurately the internal events, which form the basis of ones life.

I also want to avoid the pitfall of leaving out the mucky bits in order to impress the reader with my heroism or great intelligence. Some of the things I’ve done in my life are far from heroic and I am sometimes astonished by my own ignorance and foolishness. It was suffering that lead me to change my life not a rational response to a set of good ideas. Suffering, the positive humiliation of realising that I didn’t have the answers that I really needed and the great discovery that there is a way leading to freedom from suffering. Those factors were the foundation of my developing spiritual life and they still are.

How can we understand what it is to be a human being if none of us can tell the whole truth for one reason or another? Of course my life was different from yours so perhaps you will distance yourself from my truthfulness. That would not be difficult because my experience was almost certainly more extreme. However I do believe the phrase ‘Deviants are the litmus paper of society’. I think the human race is suffering. In some ways I was lucky enough to be suffering sufficiently to do something about it. The people I pity most are those who live with an acceptable degree of misery from birth to death. Barely keeping their heads above water they never really learn how to swim.

I make no claim to have conquered the great ocean of existence. What I do claim is that I understand this little vessel enough to have become a better navigator.

Advertisement