The entry I wrote so that I could remember having written it

My friend Molly once commented on how I often do things merely for the story I'll be able to tell once I've done them. That I sometimes seem to value the potential story more than the experience itself. She was sitting next to me at a computer terminal in a hostel in Barcelona when I received an email from my Mother, across the ocean in Canada, informing me that I had been called to jury duty. Not just any old jury duty, mind you. I had been summoned to sit on a jury for a murder trial expected to last up to a year. We spent that afternoon, Molly and I, wandering around the Gothic district of Barcelona weighing the pros and cons of doing it.* She was against, and I was leaning towards – my strongest argument being: “but think of the story I'd have to tell at the end of it!” Never mind that it would mean spending a year of my life immersed in a murder trial four days a week for less than minimum wage pay.

More recently, I've caught myself referring to potential experiences as things I would like to have done, rather than things I would actually like to do. Conversations I would like to have had, coffee dates I would like to have gone on, books I would like to have read. All experiences I expect to be tedious, awkward, or uncomfortable, but probably worth doing for the stories that I'd get out of them in the end.

I'm sure we all think this way sometimes, that the feeling of wanting to have done something is not a felling unique to me. But I get the sense that my willingness to do these things, just so that I can remember having done them, is not quite normal. I value the story so much that I am, when push comes to shove, willing to spend thirty-two consecutive hours on a bus from Amsterdam to Rome. Willing to actually fold one thousand paper cranes.

I look at it this way: experiences themselves are momentary, fleeting, ephemeral; the harder you try to hold on to them, the quicker they slip through your fingers. Experiences last a moment, but the memories of those experiences last a lifetime; and in the end, that's all a lifetime is: a collection of memories. I for one want to be a woman rich in memories, rich in stories, if rich in nothing else. When I'm old and rickety, with the wrinkles to prove it, I want to be that old woman sitting on a bench in a park telling crazy tales of wild abandon, heartbreak, and adventure. I may have a cat in each pocket. My audience may consist mainly of the ducks and pigeons that come to eat the crumbs at my feet. But one thing is for sure: the stories will all be true.


*Though jury summons' aren't usually optional, I had the luxury of turning it down on account of my being out of the country at university. In the end I discovered that the trial would begin before my final exams were over, and I surrendered to the [in]convenient timing of it all to make the decision for me.