When my first boy, Digory, was six weeks old, I wrote him
a letter about how his life is a book that only he can write. It's taken me a bit longer to get round to writing a letter to my second son, Wilfred, but here it is...
Our dearest Wilfred,
What story are you telling today? I’m
not asking what narrative you intend to follow for the rest of your life –
nothing so grand; I’m only asking what story are you telling now, today, this
minute? Your life is a book, but in every book there are chapters, and each chapter
is made up of paragraphs. Each paragraph is full of sentences which in turn are
built one word at a time. Big words. Beautiful words. The mundane and the
astonishing. Every story is made up of a million smaller stories; each life
made up of years and days and minutes. So, what story are you telling today?
Storytelling is a funny thing,
Wilfy. It’s not all about fantastic plots and spectacular twists. Sometimes
it’s not even what you’re telling; it’s how
you’re telling it. There are some people who never travel more than five miles
from the place they were born, but who lead lives that tell beautiful stories.
There are some people who travel the world and lead a thousand lives in one
lifespan, but they never find a story worth telling. You see, the stories we
tell are sometimes – perhaps often – only loosely related to the facts our
lives are built on. No good book is a bland list of events in chronological
order. No good life is either.
Sometimes this mismatch between the
stuff that happens to us and the stories we tell about that stuff is a good
thing. The most wonderful quotation in literature is from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett: If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.
What is that if it isn’t storytelling? To be able to look at disaster, or
disappointment, or just the humdrum rise and fall of an ordinary sort of life
and to see a garden within it, is a gift. If I could give you one thing,
Wilfred, it would be that ability to take hold of your life – big and full of
adventure, or small and simple – and tell a story with it that is full of
colour and growth and joy; to see flowers in bare earth. I can’t, of course.
It’s something only you can learn. Some people never see flowers, even when
walking in Eden.
This mismatch can be a difficult
thing too. You see, we can’t just be storytellers, we must also be
storylisteners. Some people will listen to the stories you tell and they will
hear something you never meant them to hear – they will twist your story and
make it into something new, a story of their own. You will tell them about an
achievement you are proud of, and they will think you are telling a story about
their own under-achievement; you will tell a story of finding the love of your
life, and they will turn it into a story about their own loneliness. You can’t
help this, Wilfy. Be kind, be honest, and don’t worry about it too much.
There will be times however, when
you will tell ugly stories on purpose. You’ll apologise without sincerity, or
you will disguise a criticism within a compliment, knowing it will wound. I
know you will, because we all do it sometimes. We all forget that we are not
only the heroes of our own stories, but characters in other people’s stories
too. Storytellers are marvellous, beautiful, hopeful things. Storytellers are
cruel. We are all storytellers. Our only hope is to keep telling the marvellous, beautiful, hopeful
stories until they drown out any cruel stories within us.
That’s the secret, you see. You
can’t always control the events that happen in your life, but you can choose
the stories you tell about them. At the end of your life – may it be long and
happy – you will head off to start the next great story, and you will leave
behind people who know you. And those people will tell stories about you. What tales
do you want them to tell? Because they will repeat the tales you told them
during your lifetime. If you want them to tell stories of a kind-hearted man,
then you must be kind-hearted. If you want them to tell tales of a man who
loved beyond measure, then love people beyond measure. It’s so simple. Isn’t
that wonderful? This thing we call life is actually kind of simple at the heart
of it. Stop and ask yourself, what story
am I telling today (this minute, in this conversation) and is it the story I
want to be telling. If it isn’t a story you want to be remembered for
telling, tell a different one. That is all.
The stories you’ve been telling us over
these first six months of your life are simple ones: the joy of a familiar face
leaning over your cot in the morning; the anguish of having that Lego brick you
finally got your hands on taken away from you again before you could swallow it.
As a character in my story you have become indispensible, intricately wound up
in my own tale. You have brought sunshine and you have brought something
indefinable I never knew I was missing. I have so many wishes and dreams for
your life. I want every story you tell to be a happy one. And I know that can’t
happen. The chapters of your life are not mine for writing. Daddy and I can
only play our part, as characters in your story, and hope that we give you the
right words to become the storyteller you want to be.
Be kind, Wilfred. If nothing else,
be kind. Love greatly. Love without fearing the consequences of loving. Be bold
in letting people love you. Tell the stories you want to tell. Tell the stories
you think the world needs to hear. Listen carefully. Laugh freely. See flowers.
