I Am My Own Book: I Am The One Who Writes, Rewrites And Adds New Chapters

Each of us is our own book. We have this opportunity to write about ourselves,  to write about our identity, and even to tear out the pages that do not fit. Maybe pages that hurt and weigh down the story of our lives.

And let’s leave one page blank. A place to start new chapters…

Jorge Luis Borges said that there are people who can not imagine a world without birds, people who can not imagine a world without water, and people who can not really imagine a world without books.

Now, every book we have read tells us that we are all stories. Existence is magical; we can make ourselves the authors of a story that is written every day.

But here is one of our biggest problems: We begin to think that we have a simple narrative with the classic, predictable structure of an introduction, a climax and an outcome.

No one has told us that the story of our lives in reality does not always have to have a logical order. There are chapters that end in the middle. There are paragraphs we should remove and rewrite. And there are many pages that are easier to get rid of so that the story will make more sense.

On the other hand, something we should definitely keep in mind is that the story of our lives only gives full meaning to one person: ourselves.

Every experience, every interaction, every decision, every emotion, caress, tremor – everything we experience has a personal meaning for us that no one else will fully understand.

In our chaos there is logic, in our personal history there are chapters in the wrong order. By starting over and over again, we will end up with the best novel ever written: our own.

When we have no choice but to rewrite the story of our lives

Joan Didion is a well-known author whom many call “the white whale of the American essay.”  She is now 82 years old and used to write to do something very interesting.

She tried to make it so that her loved one would come back to life. In December 2003, she and her husband returned from the hospital after seeing their sick daughter. Then, out of nowhere, Didion’s husband, author John Gregory Dunne, died suddenly in the living room of their house.

Just a few months later,  the daughter followed him, after giving in to pneumonia. Then Joan Didion wrote for 88 days. She wrote non-stop, and it turned out that this would be her most famous book: ” The Year of Magical Thinking”.

Both psychiatrists and anthropologists define “magical thinking” as a mental attitude in which people begin to believe that their thoughts can affect how things happen. Joan Didion hoped that her family would be with her again, that they would come back to life…

None of this happened. But after the book was published, Didion realized it was time to start a new chapter in his life. A real chapter. Scripture had served as a kind of cleansing, a way of dealing with pain.

But life kept moving, slowly because of her absent loved ones. Yet, according to her, “I could find the rhythm of existence in the same way I found it in the worlds and sentences I wrote.”

Three tips for rewriting our lives and embracing the future

At the beginning we said how important it was to have blank pages in our book. The shiny, perfect, blank pages are our opportunity to create a future full of new opportunities. Space for more chapters – new, exciting and happier chapters.

But it is easy to overlook this valuable opportunity. The opportunity to rewrite ourselves. A traumatic childhood, a family crisis, infidelity or a loss can sometimes lead us to believe that our story ends with the last, deadly chapter.

Now we want to look at three strategies to think about. They can help us change our perspective.

I am my own book: Rewriting Chapters

The first step is to revise some chapters. Make a real, objective assessment of the story of your life. From childhood to the present.

During this initial phase, do not fall into the trap of blaming others for things that have happened to you. Let’s not play the guilt game. We should only focus on ourselves, on how we see ourselves in every part of life.

Cleansing. In this second phase, we assume that changing the past is impossible. But what we can do is change the attitude we have towards our past.

It is time to accept and forgive. And above all, to let go of the burden of our past pains to be our present selves.

The third phase of this process is special. Add blank pages to the book of life. You can do this in many different ways. It’s exciting. Because we are talking about new beginnings, the chance to experiment, to allow ourselves new things. New friends, new projects, new places, new hobbies…

As we grow older and more mature, we learn something very important. The new beginning is a part of life.

It embraces a happiness that is more real, tangible and more in line with our needs. So let’s be brave and write the story we want. Write your story.

Photos by SIUM and Soizick Meister