HIPS: Writing Your Story Will Help Your Descendants Connect With The Past

By Bryan Hyde

COMMENTARY -- We’ve all heard the old adage that, “Everyone has at least one good book in them.”

In reality, there is a book that each of us is uniquely and eminently qualified to write. It’s our own story.

If you’ve never considered writing a firsthand account of your own life, here are a few things to ponder.

Journal keepers may not be widely published or recognized by anyone but their family members or descendants. 

Yet, their writings have the power to reach across the limits of time and to enlighten and create bonds with individuals they’ve never even met.

Each of us has insights that will be beneficial to someone else at some point. No matter how mundane we may consider our day to day lives, each of us is a link in a long chain that is still under construction.

When we look back on those who came before us and catch a glimpse of who they were as individuals, it helps us to appreciate how they paved the way for us. 

Their triumphs and mistakes provide us with wisdom to see beyond our own understanding.

One day, each of us will have completed our life’s journey. Leaving future generations with a connection to who we were and what we thought is an act of love and foresight.

It’s not about writing a best seller or becoming rich and famous.

Writing down our life’s story is a gift to those we’d want to know us.

* Hyde In Plain Sight is written by KDXU personality Bryan Hyde. Catch his daily HIPS vignette at 7:50-ish every weekday morning on KDXU and listen to The Bryan Hyde Show weekends at 7 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday nights.