Why should I record my life story?
As a retired Baby Boomer, you may have reached a point in life when you find yourself looking back as often as you look ahead.
Retirement provides something that was often difficult to find during the busiest years of adulthood: time to reflect.
You have accumulated decades of experiences. Childhood memories. School years. Friendships. Careers. Relationships. Accomplishments. Disappointments. Turning points. People you have known. Places you have lived. Decisions you made and decisions that were made for you.
Recording your life story provides an opportunity to revisit those experiences and consider what they mean to you now.
Here are five reasons you may decide that this is the right time to document your life story.
1. To Recollect
We carry an extraordinary number of memories with us, but many remain in the background until something brings them forward.
An old photograph may remind you of a childhood friend. A song may return you to your high school years. The name of a former colleague may suddenly bring back an entire period of your career.
An oral history interview provides time and structure for this process of recollection.
One memory often leads to another. A question about where you grew up can lead to memories of your neighborhood, your parents, your grandparents, your school, your friends, and experiences you haven't thought about for decades.
You may be surprised by how much you remember when someone takes the time to ask and listen.
2. To Reflect
Recollection asks, “What happened?”
Reflection asks, “What did it mean?”
With the perspective of retirement, experiences that once seemed unrelated may begin to form patterns. You may recognize how an early influence affected your career, how a difficult period changed your priorities, or how a seemingly small decision altered the direction of your life.
An oral history gives you permission to spend time with those questions.
The objective isn't to judge the decisions you made decades ago. It is to understand them from the perspective of the person you have become.
3. To Recognize What You Have Accomplished
Most of us don't spend much time taking inventory of our lives while we are living them.
We move from one responsibility to another. Education leads to work. Work leads to careers. Relationships develop. Families grow. Problems arise and are solved. Years become decades.
Looking back can reveal accomplishments that were difficult to recognize while they were happening.
Some may be professional achievements. Others may involve relationships, raising a family, overcoming adversity, helping other people, creating something, contributing to a community, or simply persevering through difficult periods.
Documenting your life story can provide a clearer view of the distance you have traveled.
4. To Preserve Your Memories in Your Own Voice
Memories that remain only in our minds are vulnerable to time.
Recording them creates something tangible.
An oral history preserves more than names, dates, and events. An audio recording preserves your voice, your phrasing, your laughter, and the way you tell a story. A video recording also preserves your expressions, gestures, and personality.
Photographs, home movies, letters, documents, awards, newspaper clippings, and other personal materials can also become part of the process. They can help stimulate memories during an interview and can be incorporated into an edited video history.
The result is a record of your life as you remember and understand it.
5. To Leave a Record of the Life You Lived
Although I believe the experience of recording an oral history should first have value to you, the finished history can eventually have value to other people as well.
Future family members may know basic facts about you. They may know where you lived, what you did for a living, or whom you married.
But facts alone don't reveal very much about a person.
Your oral history can preserve what you thought, what you valued, what made you laugh, what challenged you, what you learned, and how you understood the world around you.
Instead of leaving others to reconstruct your life from photographs and documents, you have an opportunity to tell them what those things meant.
Your Life Story Is Also for You
It is easy to think about documenting a life primarily as something we do for future generations.
I think there is another reason that deserves equal attention.
The process itself can be valuable.
Recollection can lead to reflection. Reflection can reveal connections. Looking back can provide perspective on experiences that were difficult to understand while we were living through them.
You don't need to have lived a famous or extraordinary life. You don't need to remember every date or detail. And you don't need to tell every story.
You simply need to decide that the life you have lived is worth taking the time to remember, understand, and preserve.
My name is Kenneth Greenberg. I am an Oral Historian located in Princeton, New Jersey. I specialize in helping retired Baby Boomers document and preserve their life stories through professionally guided audio and video oral history interviews.
If you would like to learn more about me and the oral history services I provide, please feel free to contact me.
~ Kenneth Greenberg :: Oral Historian