Joseph Edwards

About

A person sat down here recently, described eight months of upheaval in about ninety seconds, and then apologized for being boring. They really believed it was boring. They had told the summary so many times that it had stopped registering as their own life. That flattening is worth interrupting. Life transitions get compressed into an anecdote for other people's benefit, repeated at parties until the actual experience disappears underneath the summary. We take the summary apart. What is underneath is usually quite different from the version that has been in circulation. I have heard a great many well-rehearsed summaries and I have learned to ask what got left out of them. Something always did. If your own story has started to bore you, that is a sign it has been edited for an audience. What got edited out is generally the part worth discussing.