"I pulled an Indian boy out of Tonto creek too."
This line appears at the end of a story about an afternoon in Northern Arizona Boy Scout Camp in my grandfather's autobiography which he wrote when he was 18 years old. There is no other details, just this one line. The story has many details about a prank he played, but only one line about saving a boy's life. When asked about it now, at 86 years old, he shrugs; although, he can tell you with great detail how he had to leave camp early because he caught scarlet fever. He wrote this autobiography in the hull of submarine in World War II when he was 18 because my grandmother asked him to.
The value of writing an autobiography at 18 is he wrote about what was important to him up to that point in his life. If he were writing his autobiography today, he would write about his wife, children, and other large life events. But, we have captured, on paper, beautiful nuggets of life that tell who he was and explain who he is. We all need to tell our stories, but we need to tell them as we go. Capturing our stories, through blogging, journaling, vidoegraphy, throughout our is a gift to ourselves and others. When we value our lives enough to record at least bits and pieces, we embrace ourselves and our lives in whatever form they take. How do you journal?
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