If each of us has the ability to make a difference, then becoming more aware and conscious of how our lives have shaped us is an important early step in understanding our agency.
Of course, we need to work with others to achieve change – but we build better and stronger relationships with others when we know ourselves.
Writing our own political autobiography (Chapter 2) can help us identify moments, people and experiences that have shaped us, and give us time to process what their impact has been.
As the philosopher Hannah Arendt argues, telling our own story is not about simply assembling facts from the past but about interpreting what they mean to us today. Sharing our stories paints a picture of who we are – what we say and how we say it is a form of political action, where we present to others the kind of person we are and can be.
WRITING A POLITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Writing a political autobiography isn’t about constructing a single story of our lives. It is a process of identifying the myriad of bigger and smaller events, experiences and insights we have gathered over our lives.
You can start it on your own, or with others. You might ask:
- What experiences in my life helped show me why this is important?
- Or, you can think of different experiences, people or challenges and ask, what did I learn?
At first, you want to think of this as a brainstorm where you are reflecting on your whole life. Write down as many experiences as you can. As you identify moments, you might start noting down a few details: what happened, who was there, what did you learnt.
Then, you might turn to a particular story and reflect it in more detail.
As you think about each particular story consider:
- How are you seeing yourself in the story? Are you just lucky? Or unlucky? Where is your agency – what did you do, how did you react? Where are you making choices, or what is making that difficult?
- The connection between public and private life. Is the story describing tension between the world “out there” and your experience? Are you holding the power of others in tension with your power? How have forces beyond your control affected you, and what did you learn from that?
- How did that experience affect and change you? The aim is not to simply tell a story of the past but to express how it shaped who you are today.
- Set the scene. Story-telling is a visual medium. Include notes about what it looked and felt like.
- What is the moral to your story? All good stories have a “moral” – that is, they convey a single clear meaning or purpose. What is the moral in your story?
- Show don’t tell: You don’t just “name” the moral of your story – you need to show it. As I describe in Chapter 2, telling people I care about “peace” is vague, but showing how my grandma’s experience of war shaped my passion is more concrete
As you work through this process, experience by experience, story by story, the aim is for you to begin to build a greater sense of why you care and what sits behind your desire to make a difference.
But this initial brainstorm is only the start, these stories come to life and evolve as they are shared. When you tell these stories in one-to-one conversations you will see how others react, and you will also likely remember more details.
Moreover, once you start to think back, the process is likely to trigger memories of other stories. For me, old stories used to pop into my head on walks and I’d just make a note of them for future reflection.
You can download these notes as a PDF guide:
