Today is the 2nd International Day for Sharing Life Stories.
The site that operates this day explains:
This day is an opportunity to celebrate and promote life stories, as a way to encourage critical thinking, cultural democratization, and social transformation. The International Day is organized by The Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA and Canada) and the Center for Digital Storytelling (USA, Canada, Denmark, Czech Republic, Ireland and Portugal)
The chosen theme for this year’s day is “Journey for Justice — Migration and Refugees.”
My offerings for this day don’t fit the theme and may not be lofty enough to “encourage critical thinking, cultural democratization, and social transformation,” but here they are anyway:
- A fitting item for a day that celebrates life stories is an article in The Atlantic that I first learned about on the blog Mind Hacks. The article, entitled “What Makes Us Happy?” and written by Joshua Wolf Shenk is introduced thusly:
Is there a formula–some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation–for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition–and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.
“Vaughan” on Mind Hacks had this to say about the article:
It weaves the staccato train of numerical data with reflections and insights from the men themselves to attempt the impossible — it hopes to record lives.
From their brash early adulthood to their deaths or dotage the stories are brief but profound, sometimes tragic, sometimes joyful, sometimes mundane.
The study itself has generated some remarkable findings, such as the massive impact of relationships, the fading long-term effects of childhood experiences, or the role of defences in managing emotional well-being, but the piece is as much about the life of the project as its conclusions.
I have to admit I haven’t yet had a chance to read the article, but it was again called to my attention by LivelyWords (Albert E. Martinez) on Twitter, who noted that the piece “focuses largely on storytelling.”
- Cathie Dodd, who participated in a Q&A on A Storied Career, has started a Facebook group called Everybody Has a Story — What’s Yours?, particularly noteworthy for its nice list of the kinds of life stories that folks can tell.
- An article on the AARP site offers tips to Make Your Family Stories Come to Life.
- My own paltry contribution to this day is the beginning of a site that tells the story of my first year of being “bicoastal” with my husband Randall. If you follow this blog, you know that we bought property last year in Kettle Falls, WA, with plans to live here in the summer and in our Florida home in the winter. We set out on our RV journey here on April 24 (spending a week in San Antonio for a conference) and arrived eight days ago. This journey has been remarkable for me, for us, in part because of the indescribable beauty of this little corner of Eastern Washington. Being here is truly life-changing. Today we plan to renew our wedding vows after 25 years of marriage. We’ll have no officiant; we crafted the ceremony and vows ourselves; and our church will be the Cathedral of Nature here on our breathtaking land.The site needs to do much more to tell and share the story of this momentous turning point in our lives.
But it’s a start.