Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Selective Life Chronicling



I had to explain to my husband today the concept of selective life chronicling. Calvin and Hobbes first introduced me to this great idea. It's basically editing your past so other people view your life the way you want them too. I'm not just talking about untagging yourself from unflattering Facebook photos. This involves throwing away embarassing old mementos and bad poems, donating all the crappy books you own to Goodwill, crossing out key lines in your journal--maybe even ripping out whole pages. I personally don't go as far as Calvin and make stuff up...I just leave parts out, you know? This might seem wrong to some people, but there's a fine line between letting those who come after you learn from your mistakes and letting them feel free to follow in your footsteps. (The whole, "I-saw-a-General-Authority-doing-Insert a controversial topic of your choice here-so-it-must-be-okay" Syndrome.) Back to sorting!

2 comments:

Sara said...

I am in total agreement.

PS I love love your blog, even if I don't usually comment on it.

Julie M said...

I like to recall Sis. Morgan's comments on "embroidery." You don't make stuff up completely...you just embellish it a bit.

Post a Comment