Why you SHOULD write

In our church, we are encouraged to write our family history, or personal history. While it would be fun, I often think of it as boring for me to write but also for others to read. In a book club I am trying to attend regularly (uh-hmm), the book for October is The Thirteenth Tale. I have just started and didn't really read the synopsis so I can't tell you what it is about. While these two thoughts or bits of information seem unrelated here is the connection. Early in the book it says:

People disappear when they die. Their voices, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tome of voice, their moods. Through written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

It is kind of morbid in some ways but what a cool way to encourage me to write my history. I know I will not be the same me to my kids that I will be to my grandkids, and by the time their are great grandkids, if I am lucky enough to meet them, I will probably be hard of hearing, not energetic enough to play and will want to listen and watch them play. What may seem boring to me could very well be exciting for them to know who I was. A way to connect with future generations. I also think it would be cool to see what qualities I have of a great grandparent or even further up in my history. Maybe a similar sense of humor, or love of baking, even if unsuccessful, who did I get my lack of coordination from that I so awesomely (is that a word?) passed on to my beautiful and intelligent daughter?

After all that this is a note to self: Use your magic, write your story!