Documenting our Lives.

Recently I have decided to seriously pursue my goal of reading books. Not only to read them half way but to read the whole book and to critically analyse them just as I do when I watch a movie or when I listen to songs. It's one of those habits that I want to further strengthen this year. It's a blessing this year to come across a new club at Uni called "The Writers Club". It's an exciting concept, to be part of a community of equally passionate writers. In our very first meetings one of the members who had recently lost a loved one raised how you really wouldnt know who a person really was unless he had a book written a book. I agreed with her sentiments and I applauded myself a bit for having kept a diary and then I thought more needs to be done. I didn't know what further things that needed to be done then but I told myself I was going to figure it out.

The current book that I am reading Hillary Clinton: A Women In Charge by Carl Bernstein just happened to give me few ideas of why it is useful to document our journey in life and how to do that. Hilary Clinton is an amazing woman and she is my role model, I proclaim that and I exclaim what an amazing woman she is. I see so much similarities between us in terms of our deeply held beliefs and values, her journey as young person (with activism and few things she was involved in high school and at Uni) and her upbringing as a child; how her family shaped who she is. I could definitely note some striking similarities but I also feel that she has set a benchmark that I would still like to aspire to.

 How this book was able to convey these intimate details about Hilary Clinton are actually the processes that showed me some ways to document our lives and why it is important to collect memorable and important moments intimately.As a source of reference to give a picture of who Hilary Clinton was, the Author Carl Bernstein used letters exchanged between Hilary and many significant figures in her life; colleagues, mentors, boyfriends and friends to name a few. These letters were useful resources that showed Hilary's journey from her hometown struggling to please her her hard to please father  to the big city where she called the shots and was a force to be reckoned with. Her concerns at those times and her feeling were vividly expressed in those exchange of letters. Just reading through them made me realize how beautiful this practice was, the practice of passionately writing, sending and receiving letters. Nowadays we have emails and Facebook and at times communications have become more easier and instant that I feel it has lost that meaningful and the special feeling that it used to give before. Do we still have meaningful and deep conversations conversations nowadays? You know those timeless conversations. A type of conversation that can only be conveyed in a long well written letter. Speaking for myself, I don't feel that special feeling when I receive emails. It's just an in the moment kind of thing and life is just a continuous 'move on to the next project'.

I would like to change that. I would like to treasure emails sent to me that changes my life or is part of a significant shift in my life. I would like to print them and keep hard copies just like how people used to keep letters back in the days. I would also like to engage in deep and meaningful exchange of emails with people. I will treasure these letters so that one day I can look through all of them and smile because they represent the small details of how my life slowly unfolds. This will very importantly enable me to share with the world the Work that was In Progress.  

Regards,
Kaliova.