I am very please to announce that my book is now available from Amazon!
It has been in the works for over three years. I hope you enjoy it and I hope it makes the world just a little bit better.

Link to Book

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Heraclitus

I have just finished reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. The last time I read it was 40 years ago and at that time the book changed my life. I thought it a masterpiece and was full of new ideas and thoughts that really made me think deeply about the meaning of life. Very happily, I found the book to be just as insightful in my latest reading. I remembered some parts of the book very clearly and other parts seemed brand new to me, like I was reading them for the first time.

In writing a letter to your grandchildren, remind them that they should read it more than once. They will learn new things from the same letter. When they read your life stories and your best words of wisdom at 50 they will have a substantially different view  of what you wrote than when they first read it at 15.

“I matter; this life I have lived has meaning!

And because I tell it from my perspective, because I frame it, it has the meaning I give it.”

“Your Life as Story”

Tristine Rainer

Great book that covers a new kind of writing called New Autobiography. In a very real sense, this is very similar to writing a letter to your grandchildren. In brief, old school autobiography was more about chronological retelling of the major events in a person’s life. New Autobiography is more about revealing a person’s thoughts, feeling and motivations during moments in their life. 

One of the most interesting ideas in this new form of writing and autobiography is to use novelistic devices to reach inner truths, not just the truth of the facts. Which is not to say that the author write falsehoods, but rather by using techniques most often used in novels a writer can express deeper truths than just listing factual incidents. 

One other very interesting idea is to write your letter to your grandchildren as a story. Human beings love stories. We have been telling them for hundreds of thousands of years. We are wired for stories. Rainer suggests using your desire line to shape your story. What has been the great desire of your life? What have you tried to find or do all your life? Using that desire line forms the backbone of your life story.

I am very blessed to have 5.2 grandchildren. (One is currently in the oven and due in May.) One thing I have experienced in my life is the extremely strong desire for grandchildren, nieces and nephews to hear family stories. 

About ten years ago, my whole family was gathered tightly in my parents relatively small house. There were all nine siblings and over 40 nieces and nephews. It was human wallpaper. One of my brothers starting telling a story about he recovered his stolen bike. Every niece and nephew listened in wrapped attention and hung on every word. When he was done, a chant for more stories erupted, “Tell us more stories!” More stories were told. The authenticity and accuracy of some of the stories were questioned by some siblings, but the nieces and nephews didn’t care. They loved the stories. They wanted more and more. We gave them everything we could and they loved it.

Fast forward to today, and I am driving two of my grandchildren to school with my story telling brother. We start telling those same stories. My grandchildren loved them! They wanted more and more stories. Now every time I drive my grandchildren to school they want ‘old family stories.’ 

I am convinced that there is a very, very strong drive in young people to hear or read ‘old family stories.’ They can be about recovering a stolen bike or how we took down a hornet’s nest with wooden poles protected in red hoodies and Halloween masks. It doesn’t have to be about something important – it just has to be about family. 

Tell your grandchildren stories. Write those stories down. They don’t have to win a Nobel prize or even be completely true. Just tell stories. Your grandchildren are going to love them and want to hear or read every single one of them.

It is going to create a bond. It is going to unite them with family. It is going to make them feel included and loved. These are the stories that our family shares. If you are in our family, you know these stories. This is how we love each other – by sharing stories.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Mark Twain

“…we’re all hardwired in moments of empathy to see ourselves in another. Hearing each other’s stories actually raises our levels of feel-good hormone oxytocin, which is what nursing mothers secrete when they breastfeed – what partly helps them bond with their young. It helps to join us together in some tribal way.”

– Mary Karr

I was skeptical when I first read about this direct correlation between oxytocin and bonding.

Then I did some research.

It was indeed true and there is a lot of science to back it up. It’s very real. Hug someone and you get a boost of oxytocin. Watch an emotional video – get a boost. Read about how your grandmother fell in love with your grandfather – get a boost. Emotional stories do indeed bond people. Those stories can do it across time and space. Write your letter and connect with the people you love.

Watch the Ted Talk by Paul Zak “Trust, Morality and Oxytocin.”

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”  – Horace Mann

Writing  a letter to your grandchildren can be that victory. Claim that victory, write your letter.

Here is a story about a twelve year old boy who was given some advice. The boy was at a crossroad. He could have chosen to vent his anger in violence or he could have chosen to redirect his anger constructively based on the wise words spoken to him by someone who cared about him. He chose wisely and changed his life dramatically. The person that gave him those helpful words won a victory for humanity.

It was 1954, a twelve year old boy had his beloved bike stolen. The boy was pissed. A caring and wise man advised the boy to learn how to box before he hunted down the thief that stole his bike. The boy took the advice, went to a gym and learned how to box. The boy was Cassius Clay, who later became Mohamed Ali.

That caring and wise man’s advice changed Mohamed Ali’s life. The boy listened, made an important decision and greatly improved his life. Mohamed Ali’s life went on to inspired hundreds of thousands of other people. Victory for humanity.

Your letter can be that victory for humanity.

When you tell the story of your life to your grandchildren you are entering into an agreement with them. You agree to tell them the truth and they agree to believe you. However, it is next to impossible to be completely truthful in the telling of your life story. Your memory is not going to be perfect. Sometimes, you want to tell more than the truth; you want to tell a higher truth. Telling the absolute truth is very, very difficult.

Here are four solutions.

First, start by telling your grandchildren that they can trust you to tell the most truthful story you can. Explain to them that you can be trusted to tell the most truthful version you can remember. Be sure to start your letter with this information. Don’t leave it for the end. Be honest from the start. Whatever your standards are, disclose them at the beginning of your work.

Second, you can explain your writing style in advance. That you write with a humorous slant, and they should know that when you do, you are just trying to be funny. That you are going to intentionally leave out things you think would hurt someone unnecessarily or cause family division.

Third, do not intentionally add things to your story that did not happen in real life. You can express how you felt in detail, but falsifying reality breaks the bond between you and your reader. Be transparent.

Fourth, tell them you are injecting a story, and it is totally fictional. Then write a story that you can embellish as much as you want. Sometimes in a story that is totally fictional you can tell a higher truth.

“Great men are those who see that thoughts rule the world.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thoughts are extremely powerful. According to Emerson, they rule the world. Thoughts like freedom created America. Thoughts of prosperity and happiness created thriving businesses. Thoughts of love create and maintain families. With the right thoughts a person can live a happy and fulfilled life. With the wrong thoughts life can become hell on earth. It’s in the power of thoughts and ideas. Here are some words of wisdom about the power of thoughts.

“As a man thinks, so he is; as he continues to think so he remains.” – James Allen

“A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“A man’s life is what his thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius

“Change your thoughts and you can change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale

“A man is what he thinks about all day long.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you write a letter to your grandchildren you are giving them your best thoughts and ideas. You are giving them the power to make their life better. 

My parents used to say that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. I got upset every time I heard them say that. It was so pessimistic and they were talking about the next generation – my generation.

Damn it, they were right!

Now, when I am at the same age they were when they said that, I find myself saying the same thing. Funny how life repeats itself.

Here is what I see that upsets me – schools having the power to encourage gender changes without notifying parents, disregard and disrespect for law and order, forgetting the enormous sacrifices made by previous generations, people being sucked into their phones when they could be talking to a person sitting next to them and ripped jeans.

Truth is – anger is an energy. I can channel this anger into positive results by writing about these things to my grandchildren. I can redirect this frustration into carefully worded letters that have the potential to help them and stop the world from going to hell in a hand-basket. I can warn them that just because other people think torn jeans are cool, that doesn’t mean that torn t-shirts or torn underwear are equally good ideas. A pair of pants that cover your legs makes sense. 

Use the power of your frustration with a world gone mad to power your letter writing. Warn them that if there is no respect of other people’s property then soon they will have no property or possessions of their own. Remind them to be kind, loving and respectful of other people. To help people, not to hurt people. Be the canary in the coal mine. Be a loving, helpful and wise grandparent. Write your letter.

One of the most depressing autobiographies you could ever read. The story of a very, very poor Irish boy surviving hunger, the death of several siblings and an alcoholic father who squanders his meager wages on beer rather than feeding his starving children. The kind of book that makes you feel grateful for your life and the luxury of a bowl of oatmeal. He survives near death illnesses. It is a brutally honest recounting of a desperately poor childhood. But the writing is not bitter or resentful. It is about learning to survive and finding what joy you can whenever you can. It is truly an inspiring book because it make you really appreciate what you had growing up.