As I quietly sat in the sparsely occupied journalism lecture, I waited patiently as I wondered what book the lecturer was going to read to us today. Noticing that no books were placed on the counter, I slowly grew suspicious of what was to come...
"Write a six word memoir in the next five minutes." she explained, as a hush slowly settled into the corners of the room. Our life story in six words? You're kidding, right? I sat perplexed. I felt exposed and naked in my inability to capture the essence of my life in those six words. This was amplified as all those around me almost instantaneously started writing at their mini autobiographies. Where do I even start? What do I focus on? How could six words possibly explain the complexities of my life? Every aspect of it, every experience, every hardship and every moment of glory has shaped me into the young woman that I am today. How do I discern which of those were more important than others?
I remembered a book that I read about a year or two ago that comforted me in my few moments of unease. It is called "Saturday" and was written by Ian McEwan. What struck me most about this book was that it was in its entirety (over 300 pages) devoted to intimately and meticulously describing every detail of a single day in a man's life, named Henry Perowne. Through this book Ian McEwan showed just how precious every moment of our lives are. He proved its worth. That it's worth remembering, worth telling, and definitely worth writing about. Yet, here I was, a year later, trying to sum up my life's story in merely six words.
Words have such importance and carry so much power within them. As journalists, we need to truly understand the value of life and consider the manner in which we portray the lives of the individuals whose stories we are telling. How can we as writers reduce an individual's entire life into a couple of pages, into an article, or even into six, measly, little words?
But here's my attempt. My six words...
Born to love...passionately, truly, unconditionally.
2 comments:
great peace of work.
I had a similar experience to the one you had.
As soon as the lecturer requested that we write our best quality I sat there motionless at having to filter all the possibilities into just...one. As I peeped on of my friends answers I realised she had written ‘caring’ as her best quality. As I looked around the class, eager JMS (Journalism students) were constructing this piece of writing as laughter and emancipation filled the room, so I decided not be a ‘deviant’ within the small society I had been placed in, and construct this task with care. This is what I wrote:
One word that could describe my best quality is passion; the urge to conduct an act that will benefit me for future purposes fills my heart with glee. The intense butterflies having a tug of war in my stomach and the sharp pin like feelings on my shoulders when I frequently worry about what I have destined myself to do, to become...this is the same feeling that sets me free.
Now to venture on the last part with the six word memoir, I realised I had to stick to my best quality while summarising myself into six words. This is when I concluded:
Life’s short, passions distinguished, victory achieved!
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