The Awful and the Awesome: Why Memoirs Encapsulate Awe

(My scanner did a pretty strange job scanning the cards. Also, I couldn't figure out how to flip them. So here's my presentation in all its crappy glory. Enjoy. Don't crank your neck too far. Trust me, the drawings aren't worth it.)

What is the occasion for memoir? Why are we so drawn to some and not to others?

What makes a life or experience worthy of appearing in a memoir?

The difference is usually in the quality of experience. As humans, we are fascinated in how people get from point A to point B.

But how do you compare experiences when they are all so different? How can we resonate with something that is clearly different from our own? Why do we prefer reading about some experiences over others?

There has to be some degree of awe involved for us to be interested. Usually, it is something awesome or awful.

But how do these things happen to people? Is it what happens to them or what they make of what happens to them that makes it interesting?

It all hinges on a critical decision that may seem unnecessary or irrelevant at the time, but ends up having big consequences.

ex: The Last American Man
-Eustace Conway loves the outdoors
-his dad is abusive and thinks loving the outdoors is silly and useless
-one day Eustace runs away from home and survives in the woods using his skills
-this decision shapes his entire life

Eat, Pray, Love
-Elizabeth Gilbert is wildly successful, but severely unhappy
-trapped in marriage, ordinary milestones aren't leaving her feeling fulfilled
-takes off on a trip that seems crazy, but ends up changing her life

Wild
-Cheryl Strayed's life is falling apart, her father dies
-decides on a whim to hike the entire Pacific Coast Trail
-finds herself and realigns her life

But why? What drives these decisions to go in search of awe? To shrug off the mundaneness of life?

They want a new ordinary, a new way of existing from the day to day. They want to go from the old ordinary to the new ordinary.

Thus, the ordinary is the launching pad for awe. It is what drives the initial decision and continued pursuit.

The ordinary and awe exist in a cyclical and symbiotic relationship that is essentially the driving force of our existence.

Thus, we read memoirs because they are dramatized, concentrated, and sometimes exaggerated versions of the cycles we wish to replicate within our own lives of rising above the ordinary to reach for awe and a higher plane of existence.