On Documenting a Life
The struggle of remembering and being remembered
Perhaps one of my greatest fears in life is forgetting: motivations, old friendships, spontaneous trips, that cool mural, and much more. In a culture of building lore, something only happened if you had something tangible to show for it… right?
I have been thinking about this for a few reasons: (1) I have a friend who is obsessed with taking pictures and documenting daily life, no matter how mundane life is for her; I want to investigate and discuss this act. (2) My paternal grandfather passed away nearly a decade ago. I heard he was a great man; I knew him, but only as my grandfather, not as a husband, father, son, friend, colleague, father-in-law, nephew, acquaintance, and so on. He was a great man indeed; someone wrote a book about him that I have not yet read. I will read this soon, and I will learn about him as much as I can, at least. Perhaps my father will tell me stories. On the other hand, my maternal grandfather passed away recently. I heard he was a great man, too, but a book was not written about him. I knew him more, and he loved me dearly. I have a shirt of his as a tangible keepsake. I can only learn about him from my mother, but again, I will not know him in his other roles. There is a clear difference in how I can access my memories of my two grandfathers: which is better? The book seems better than the shirt. Is there a better way to remember someone? Certainly, in the modern world, taking pictures and videos is widely accessible, a privilege my grandfathers did not have: does this privilege demand its usage? Would I have liked to see videos of my grandfathers goofing around? (3) My parents will inevitably pass away. But they will only begin to die when I begin to forget. How can I remember them better? What can I do now to remember them better? I live in another country, what do I do? (4) My children may have the same feelings as I do toward my parents. How should they remember me? How do I make it easy for my children to access memories of me?
Ultimately, how do I strike a balance between documenting my life and living it? Perhaps this question is neither sensible to you nor of importance; it is both to me.
(1) My Obsessive Friend
My friend may read this: it is not you, it is someone else in my life… probably.
My friend takes many pictures to the annoyance of her friends (including me). She claims that I will appreciate this when I am old. I am still annoyed, but she is right. I will appreciate the effort she put into documenting me among her other friends (provided she shares these pictures). Assume she will share the pictures. If you are reading this, you know this friend is you; please share the pictures/videos from our last few (all) hangouts.
But how much is too much, and are pictures the only medium for memory? On one hand, documenting just the big moments seems important at first, but I remember them anyway, since, you know, they were important: I remember the day I graduated with my bachelor’s degree. Of course, I have many pictures from that day commemorating my achievement. Without the pictures, though, I still know what I felt. My diploma is hanging on the wall, my honors medallion hangs beside the diploma, and my current job is due to my graduation. I have constant reminders around me, and yet, I took many pictures. I am not complaining, but it is worth noting. The effort distribution must not be biased toward the big, important events; it must be uniformly distributed.
On the other hand, when I see a picture of a random friend hangout, my heart sinks. My heart does not sink for my diploma; for it to sink, I would have needed to forget, and this was impossible. My diploma is on my wall, but my friends are not, and I miss them. I forgot that we played that particular board game that particular night after a terrible exam. This picture is more important to me. My heart sank because I forgot, and my heart sinking for a memory is a beautiful thing. I am glad we took a picture, even if I look a little weird— what was that outfit?
My picture-obsessive friend will have many heart-sink moments when she looks back at all the pictures she took. But will they be as intense or meaningful? She spends a lot of time not being in the moment as she must take a picture, and to do this, she expels herself a little bit. Additionally, she spends a lot of time reviewing photos.
My friend is not in the moment very often. She spends time on her phone. A ton of her screen time is doom-scrolling, but a significant portion is reviewing photos: for aesthetics, looks, and determining which can be posted. Is this acceptable? Like most answers, the answer is both yes and no. Reviewing photos is acceptable, but her motivations are not (For her, they are; for me, these motivations are unacceptable. I am writing this essay; she would write a different perspective, and there is no right perspective, just the one that I perceive.). I think reviewing photos to determine if they accurately capture the moment is a worthy cause, but reviewing photos for hours is not a worthy endeavour, let alone for mere aesthetics.
Posting the best pictures is not wrong. In fact, posting pictures is a completely valid way to document; I advocate for this. I do not advocate for spending more time reviewing pictures of something than being present when that something is happening. My friend documents her life, and I like this quality. But sometimes, she does things for a picture rather than take a picture because she did something. And when she does take pictures, it is at least 10-15 (hence, the need to review). This seems like a corruption of the idea of documentation. It begs the question of authenticity.
It sounds like I am thrashing this friend in this essay; I am not. I am something worse: I document my life very little. This essay is an attempt to figure out how can I be better at documenting. Time is my strongest resource; I want to ensure my time’s best use: I must understand good documentation.
How can my friend do better? Take fewer pictures for a start. But I am really interested in what she can do beyond taking pictures. What can she do to stay in the moment while documenting her life? Ultimately, what can I do to document my life?
(2) My Grandfathers
My life, like many, was influenced by my parents. My parents’ lives must have been influenced by their parents, which is why I want to know more about my grandparents: Where were my influences influenced? What is my heritage? Do I embody a trait that has been in my family for a long time? Do I laugh like my grandfather, perhaps even my grandfather’s grandfather, whose name I do not even know?
I am not part of the royal family; my family is not well-documented. I do not know what their dreams were, I do not know if their favorite food is also tomato-lentils (my comfort food), I do not know anything, frankly. Their memory is already dying. My parents’ generation will be the last to know my grandparents’ generation nontrivially. I am not sure what the appropriate word for this feeling is, but it is awfully similar to lonely.
Was I wrong for not making an effort to know my grandparents more? They loved me dearly, and so did I, but not nearly as much, I bet. It feels very selfish of me that they loved me and remembered me than I loved them and remembered them.
Many times, they tried to call me and wished to speak to me. I was always busy. What was I busy with? I know it was nothing important because I am sitting here writing about my grandparents, not the thing I was busy with; I do not even remember it. Would I have appreciated it if my grandparents were like my picture-obsessed friend? Yes, I would have. But at the same time, I have pictures of my grandparents: what I lack is context within those pictures.
Pictures alone are not enough. What happened in the picture? Was that picture important to my grandparents? Was it a snapshot of something my grandparents would have liked for me to remember?
(3) My Parents and Brothers
My parents and brothers are some of the most important people in my life. I live in a different country, so we only speak on the phone. While I am grateful for the technology that enables this, it is not a replacement for living together. I do not know many meaningful things about them. I know more about some of my acquaintances here than about my family back home, and this fact is upsetting. I wish to change this, but I do not know how: I selfishly wish to document their lives for me to see.
My parents and brothers are still alive and will likely live at least a few decades more. I am in my early twenties, my brothers (both younger) are about to turn twenty (at the time of writing), and my parents are in their fifties. I have time. My parents might not remember everything that shaped them, but I bet they remember more than they have shared so far.
The questions I am tussling with (as written so far) still have an opportunity to be answered. Now the problem is how I can document their lives, or how they can document their lives for me. Pictures are not sufficient, as I discussed above: I need context into their lives. There is so much to a person’s life: it cannot be reduced to a handful of pictures. Still, their life is to be compressed to a point that I can view it without giving up much of my own time; why not give up my time, you may ask: I must build memories of my own.
Arguably, the most important reason I am exploring these ideas through the writing of this essay is for me to remember my parents and brothers better. I want to be a better son and elder brother. I want to keep them close even when I am far away.
(4) My Children and Grandchildren
Perhaps I can answer these questions by understanding what I would like my children and their children to remember about me. So, who am I? What should my legacy be? What a tough question to even think about. Even merely attempting to answer these things offers another perspective: a perspective that much of my daily routine will not matter when I am remembered, if I am remembered.
I am not yet comfortable with the fact that at some point, I will not be remembered. Maybe the digital age I am in will always leave easter eggs of my existence to be found by a curious cat in my family, but I digress.
So, What am I?
I can start by listing axioms about myself: I am someone who aspires to be great. I still aspire to be great. I am a flawed person: flawed in the way that I can hurt people around me, I can easily be distracted, or can temporarily forget what motivates me. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what motivates me; I only know that I wish to find a secret. I do not know what secret because I have not found it yet, and maybe I never will—this would mean my life would have rendered meaningless, but it is a nihilistic point of view that I refuse to accept. Everything I do, even if temporarily distracted, is to find that secret; I will always try. I want my children to remember that their father tried regardless of a clear end goal.
I am a man who holds many interests: linguistics, electronics, mathematics, economics, political philosophy, cycling, skiing, bowling, music, reading, interior design, and writing, to name a few. I have not even included the interests that the many years of my future self will inevitably develop. I have many interests because the secret I do not yet know can lie anywhere. My attempt to become good at many of them is in the service of understanding.
I am a man who cares about those around him, even if I have trouble expressing my love. I am a man who loves many things and people. I have a vast amount of love in me. I am a man who always strives to help and feels guilty when I cannot. I am a man who wants to do what is right, though I am unsure many times what right means. Understanding what is right and what is wrong is perhaps the secret that I will find.
I am a man who does not know, a man who will never know— there is simply too much to know. I am a man who is starting to become comfortable with not knowing everything there is to know: I do not even know what I do not know. However, knowing that I do not know, I am confused when people tell me that they think I know things beyond them. People around me respect me, but I cannot figure out why. I know this because they have told me. I do not know what to do with this knowledge, but I find happiness in the fact that I have added value to their life.
I am a man full of wishes: I wish to add value to the lives around me. This is the minimum that my kids should know.
However, they would want to know more. How do I know this? Because I want to know my parents and brothers beyond what drives them to do everything. After all, I do not know exactly what drives me; it is likely my parents and brothers do not know either. I hear from parents that it is their children who drive them to do the things they do, but there must be more to this fact: What drove them before?
When my parents are tired, what do they turn to? Which characters do they resonate with in books they read? In the shows or movies they watch, which scenery would they have liked to be in? What do they think of me? What were the important moments that shaped them, and as a result, me?
Ideas for a Solution
How can I document my life such that I can offer the knowledge that I seek from my parents to my children? The best answer I can think of is writing it down in books. What should I write down? The recipes I like to eat, the cocktails I like to drink, and how they make me feel, my thoughts, my fears, my pleasures, my favourite music or movies or TV shows, and equivalent things in other categories. But writing is not the best medium for everything; however, if I were to pick one form of storage, it would be writing.
I also do not want to spend so much time documenting that I forget the moment I am in. I also do not wish to do things for the reason of documentation, as I mentioned before, it raises the issue of authenticity.
After browsing the internet and talking to people, I have formed a rudimentary solution. It involves being intentional and putting in the effort. All things worth remembering require effort and intention.
We definitely need pictures, so my picture-obsessed friend is partly right. Though how you look in the picture is not as important as the record it creates. Context in those pictures is necessary, so periodically you must combine pictures into a photo album and write down what happened there or why it was important to you. This offers context; it tells a story. This form is good to capture events in your life. You must also journal (for me, writing this deeply personal essay is a way to (a) obtain clarity, and (b) record my inner monologue) to convey your inner thoughts. Maintain a commonplace notebook to capture fleeting thoughts: you listened to a song on repeat, write it down; you tried a new recipe, write it down; you had an idea for a startup that you may never start, write it down. This book will capture your personality. The goal is to do this frequently so it does not build up and make it such that I have to make time to document.
Of course, there are many ways to store information. Many people may even record themselves and compile it into a movie rather than write— a great idea. The ideas above are not groundbreaking; low-effort methods to remember everything important to me, the best way I can.
The next time I see them, I am going to give my parents each an empty book and tell them to fill it up with whatever they would like me to remember. I will offer a few questions as guides: What are some important moments that shaped you? What are your comfort items/music/food? Who were important people in your life and why? Why do you love what you love? How do you want to be remembered? And so on.
I will also do the same in case my children or their children want to know me. I regret not asking my grandparents. My family must not feel this way about me. I will offer anyone who desires to know tangible proof of my existence, my lore, and my thoughts. Even if it is too late and I am not there to answer, I will try to answer.
After all, I am a man who tries.
Credits
The picture used in this article was shared by Sama (username) on Pinterest. I do not claim any ownership of the picture.
AI Notice
Grammarly AI was used to rectify grammatical errors and ensure proper punctuation. However, absolutely no AI was used as inspiration for the content. Everything written here is my own.