History is for the living
eastbayyesterday.substack.com
History is for the living
Memory is meant to be given. It isn’t held well alone. It is meant to be held in a collective and across generations. Memories that remain exclusive to a particular individual or even community are at risk of becoming false.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Is the grief I have felt, sometimes, in this writing, a kind of transmitted nostalgia—a mourning for what was lost, against the narrative of progress and accomplishment that characterizes most contemporary stories of our diaspora? I think sometimes of the villages where my ancestors lived, which I have visited for only a few days in my life. And I
... See moreMinal Hajratwala • Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents
But if you can’t look at your origin stories, if you can’t look at your pain and trauma, if you get caught making what you experienced smaller or bigger than what it is, if you get stuck idealizing it, or if you get stuck intellectualizing it away, you run the very high risk of being a bystander in your own life.
Vienna Pharaon • The Origins of You: How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live and Love
Who we are is where we come from and what we’ve seen and what we’ve said. And what we continue to say. And for so many good reasons, it’s a good idea to write it all down. While you remember, and while you can. Life is always in the particular details, the details that only you actually know.
Oldster Magazine • What Good Are Our Memories If We Never Share Them?
sometimes the answer to the question reveals something much deeper — a hidden truth that often makes for a great story. Bruce Springsteen once said in an interview: “Most people’s stage personas are created out of the flotsam and jetsam of their internal geography and they’re trying to create something that solves a series of very complex problems
... See more