On stories, text & the novel "Family Matters"

“Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different. ” 
― Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters

Vintage Books & Anchor Books posted this today on my Facebook news feed.

I have never read anything written by Rohinton Mistry & in all fairness, perhaps I should read this novel before commenting on a quote posted on a news feed on Facebook.

But this is my blog & to paraphrase a 1963 song by Lesley Gore, the first hit single for producer Quincy Jones;

It’s my blog & I will write if I want to.

While I agree that everyone underestimates their own life, its importance & influence, I cannot reach the conclusion from that particular observaton that all  of our life stories are the same.

I know, from years of study, that all text comes from texts before & influences texts to follow.  But each poem, each short story, each novel, each individual’s text is unique.  A reweaving of what came before, but the result is the author’s own weave.

All writers – those that put words down on paper or on film or on the Internet or are authoring the story of their lives – all writers pull from their past & others’ pasts & from the present &  from projections into tomorrow.

All our stories are not the same.

Because the only important story is not one of “youth, loss and yearning for redemption.”

Rohinton Mistry was born two years before me, so his words are not coming from a place of extreme youth.  He was born in India, resides in Canada & writes in English.  He is a highly recognized author: Oprah's Book Club, Scotiabank Giller Prize, Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada.

Although we are so very near in age, we come from different backgrounds, different cultures, different experiences. 

Which may explain my resistance to his premise in this quote that the only important story is of “youth, loss, and yearning for redemption.”

Because I truly believe that there are so many stories yet to be told.  Stories born of maturity & experience & enlightenment & forgiveness.  Stories that do not focus on youth or loss or yearning but on what comes when one realizes that the very best to be is found in the sunrise of the next morning. 

And on the realization that redemption is always possible, at any stage in one’s life.

All stories contain threads of other stories.  It is impossible to tell one’s own story without drawing on the stories or incorporating into one’s memory the threads & pieces of stories told by family, friends, extended family, strangers; from fiction or from the world.

In spite of the words Tolstoy used to open his magnificent Anna Karenina, all families & all family matters, are not the same:

 All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

So, it seems that this text by Rohinton Mistry & I have a rendezvous that is perhaps overdue.

I will, of course, let you know how that rendezvous plays out.

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