When I tell people that my mission is to help folks write their personal stories, or memoirs, I almost always get a comment that goes something like, ‘my life is so ordinary that I’d have nothing to write’.
I beg to differ. I don’t believe there is such a thing as an ordinary life. There are in every life perhaps ordinary events, but that is not the same thing. My concern is that when someone says they have only an ordinary life, they mean either (best case) that it would seem dull to others; or (worst case) that it has no worth.
Many people get married, some more than once. Yet is every wedding the same, do all the guests behave with decorum, do all the important guests even show up? There are dozens upon dozens of stories unique to you, even in so-called ordinary life events. How did you feel on your wedding day? How did your parents or siblings react on the day? What odd things happened? Did the groom actually show up and on time?
My husband-to-be kept the wedding party waiting for 3 hours in a baking hot prairie church. No one knew what to do. One of my best friends fainted from the heat and broke her front tooth somehow. The rest of us merely whispered and sweltered. Nobody left the church. I actually married the guy, but it was 1965 and I was 18 so what did I know? No explanation was given when he finally arrived, but I have some pretty good notions of where he and my father were during that time.
So exactly what was ordinary about this ordinary life event? Well, we had a cake that was pretty ordinary.
Each of us has many stories about either our own wedding or weddings we have attended over the years. Why not list some of the more significant weddings in your life, then go through your list and mark any that you think were without any unique or remarkable events. I’d be surprised to hear you had any check marks on your list.
Do you still think everything about your life is ordinary?