Last night, while watching the tears-inducing Spanish film Live Twice, Love Once, a startling thought popped into my head – the kind you can’t avoid because it carries the resonant whiff of something that might be true.
The film follows a retired math professor who, after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, tries to find the love of his youth.
In fairly short order, the professor forgets his way home from his favorite restaurant, he forgets his granddaughter’s name, forgets what he likes to eat, and perhaps worst of all, he can no longer do the simplest math equations.
As he struggles to accept his memory is becoming lace-like, he realizes there is one cherished scene from the past he is scared to lose almost more than anything else.
Thus begins his hero’s journey to find out what became of the girl of his youthful passion, if it’s not too late. To see her one more time and see if she, too, still thinks of him.
The ending is both satisfying and utterly heartbreaking.
This was actually the second time I watched the film over the past six months, it’s that well done.
But this time around, it got me thinking – is this one of the reasons we write memoirs? Do we feel compelled to write them so our stories will be there, even if we ourselves become mentally unmoored from our memories? Do we write so there will be something we created, a way-finding map of words, that tells us who we once were?
Each of us has reasons why we write. I think the reasons vary with who we are and how we got to here. Here can be here on Substack or here at this stage of life. What just happened is that the title of Marshall Goldsmith's book came to mind, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There."
I wrote a post, https://garygruber.substack.com/p/why-we-write, offering up my explanation and have since talked with others about their reasons for writing. I consider writing like living, an experiment to see what I can learn and add something to the index of experiences. If I want to refer back, I know where to look and if I want to be here fully now, that too is a conscious choice. Our lives make up stories and in writing, we tell the stories, past and present, the future TBD with hopes and dreams yet to be realized and told.
And maybe that's why we write or paint or make any kind of art at all ...