Keeping your timeline on time and in line
“When I was seventeen, it was a very good year”. I submit, dear reader, this snippet of lyrical content as proof that others make the effort to timeline their lives.
It’s probably close to universal, this bit of recounting our existence alongside past calendars. I draw exception for those languages that lack a past tense, but I’m sure there is a workaround. After all, we are the sum of all our yesterdays. And unless your existence is as dull as pulped wood, you probably catch yourself reminiscing. Nothing wrong. No harm done. Jethro Tull did an album entitled “Living In The Past”, and he can do no… well, he probably can, but we’re not here to be judgemental.
Back to timelining. As long as your sense of chronology is linear, others will accept it as proof that you’re aren’t “an alien living among us”. We need our past. The real test is in your granularity.
When you “remember” high school, does it take four years (the commercial breaks are edited out) to tell a story? Bad sign. Unless your listener is sicker than you, an anecdote should take minutes to recount. Even with the gestures and musical interjections. Ditto for your baby’s early years; especially when the baby is still in those early years. Nobody else wants the play by play of last evening’s colic.
A special shout out to those who are older. Ninety years of memories takes a long time to cover properly. Don’t do a Churchill and prepare five or six volumes to cover the weeks you spent hanging out in the basement with some good brandy.
