Twenty Years Ago

Where were you and what was your life like twenty years ago? (ten if you're under 30, five if you're under 20 - you get the idea.) Perhaps more importantly, what were you like then and what are you like now in comparison?

It's doubtful that you are the same. If you are, maybe you need to examine why. Is it because you were perfect then and your life has been static since you see no need for anything to be different? Or more likely, have you buried yourself and your life in concrete, an attempt to avoid scary change - better the devil you know than the one you don't -kind of thing.

Change is usually painful. Most people don't change for positive reasons, because they want to, but because the pain of changing has become less than the pain of maintaining things the way they are. -And sometimes they have no choice in that. Many things in our lives are beyond our control, so if someone or something else changes and it has a huge negative impact on our lives, maintining the status quo becomes more painful than the frightening idea of changing ourselves and our lives.

So looking back, not to beat ourselves up but simply to recognize where we were at back then and what changes we've gone through since. Visiting the past is worthwhile - living in it isn't.

Thinking Backwards

I find myself writing a play, not something I ever thought about doing. However, I wrote a series of short stories - short fictional anecdotes really - that had the same speaker, an old retired farmer who is keenly observant and has a wry, gentle wit. I didn't know what to do with them until one evening I was at a fund raiser for the region's land trust and the MC was a local actor, a man with considerable talent, especially a keen sense of comic timing. Part way through the evening, I realized he would make a marvelous speaker in my stories, and maybe I should turn them into a play.

However, it evolved totally differently from my usual pattern. I always talk about 'thinking backwards', by which I mean when you have the general idea for a story, think about how it ends, then work backwards, thinking about what you have to include to make the ending make sense. Then think about what needs to come before that, both events and characters, etc. Eventually, you have a plan and you can 'write forwards', based on the detailed outline from 'thinking backwards'.

However, that isn't what I did here. When I began, I had no idea how it would end, so now that I have written the ending, I need to re-write earlier scenes, so the ending doesn't come out of the blue. The things that happen, the ways the characters act, the dialogue, etc. all need to fit realistically.

Generational Changes

During the last week or so, I've come to recognize just how much things have changed in my family. My mother had to quit school after Grade 8. It was the Great Depression, she was the oldest in a large family, and her father did not believe educating women was worthwhile. My daughter attended university in Scotland last year to complete a Master's Degree, and will be beginning a PhD program at the University Of Victoria next September.

How much things have changed in two generations.