Someone recently asked me
why I love literature and writing so much. This happens more than I would have
expected when first declaring myself as an English major. “Writing is just too
boring,” they said. As a student of literature, you can guess that I was a
little disappointed to hear their opinion of the written word. Despite how many
times I have been asked this question, I feel that I can never give an adequate
response right away. Fittingly, it is only when I am given the chance to sit
down and express my thoughts through writing am I able to discuss my passion.
Even so, I feel that my explanations are never enough; there is always more to
why we are so intrigued by topics.
We write to remember, and
to forget. We write to forgive, to explore, and to express. We write to make a
mess, and we write to make cohesive sense of an event. No matter why we write,
we do it. We pick up our pens and scribble, draw, or write random words. We write
whole sentences, and paragraphs, and pages. We open our computers and tick tack
away, watching the letters turn into words that flow from our brains to our
hands. We create these words, these images, these stories, and these
documentations. But they also create us. They move and shift us. They disturb
us, and set us at peace. They infiltrate our thoughts and affect our
interpretations. We bring a piece of ourselves into writing. Fiction or
non-fiction, there is always some speck of who we are in our words. Our
experiences and the memories of our experiences seep into writing, no matter
how hard we try to remain distant.
I recently finished a
memoir, The Memory Palace, by Mira
Bartok that explores the untrusting nature of memory. Recent research by
psychologists, as Mira tells, proves that the human mind is infinitely more
complex than assumed. When we remember and extract a memory from our mental
storage unit, we are often recreating things that might not have truly
happened. Every time we retell a story, something happens to the brain’s neurons
that create a chemical change. In our lives, we rely so heavily on our
memories. They allow us to maintain our identity, to give us a sense of where
we came from and who we continue to be. We use our memories as points of
reference so we don’t feel lost or out of place. But what does it mean when
current research is proving that memories are extremely unreliable? In a sense,
we are being told that we create our
own memories; what we believe to be held as factual and truthful may indeed not
hold accountability.
I find this interesting,
because it causes me to wonder about the genre of memoir and memoir-writing. If
we create our own memories, our own stories, how can we believe the words a
memoir-writer says? How do we know that what we have just read is true, and how
do we trust them? In the end, it doesn’t matter. Unless you are a journalist or
biographer, you don’t have to have one hundred percent truth. The memoir genre
is beautiful in the sense that it combines both fiction and non-fiction. It
allows you to take pieces of the past, things from your or someone else’s
perspective, and create a story out of it- imagination and memory work together
to produce an authentic story bound by perspective and intuition.
So when I think about
writing and literature, and why I love it so much, I remind myself that it’s
like a key that unlocks so much more. It allows us to explore and experience
things we may have never been given the chance to. For me, reading and writing
is a mainstay, a source of lifeblood. No matter what your passions are,
remember that writing can help you dig into the core meaning and purpose of
their existence in your life.
-Kathleen Bure
