"Regarding the note-taking, you might ask, "Isn't it enough just to live it? Why write it down?" The answers there are human:To keep it: to capture your time in history as it happened. To remind yourself it's real"
Further on, Noonan advances the idea that people leave their papers behind to remind future readers that 'they were here - and, I guess, successful enough that someone may care.
"I was alive—this is proof," and, "I was successful—here is the evidence."For those of us not so successful or famous, what do we leave behind? We've lived our own history. Most of us never took notes - let alone had someone else take them about our lives. We live with the memories of what we 'lived', what we witnessed, what we felt. How different is our memory of those events compared to the reality of it? Has time washed away some of the questionable aspects or embellished them beyond what the notes would have supported?
Many, many people keep journals. I envy them. I haven't the discipline to keep one up-to-date.
But how many of us find our way into someone else's notes or journals - as the Clinton's did?Obviously our actions aren't as important as the leader of the free world, but it does give you pause. Maybe we should all live our lives as if someone IS taking notes. [enter religious thoughts here]
