Authentic life stories
Last year, a new friend introduced me to a group where participants shared short stories from their personal lives. The group leader would suggest a topic, and the stories revolved around that theme. The stories were all very interesting, some inspiring and others insightful. The participants shared a lot about their lives, and some of the stories even resonated with my own experiences. I really enjoyed attending this meeting once a month. It was a welcome change of pace in my daily routine.
A few weeks ago, I saw that the group leader had written a summary of the meeting and posted it in the Facebook group. Since I felt the summary didn’t accurately reflect my story, I asked him to correct it. However, he refused. Instead, he suggested simply omitting my story altogether. Today, I saw that he had completely revised the summary, and my story was omitted.
Since the group leader mentioned that some participants had a different impression of the story that was told, I decided to publish these little everyday stories here on this blog as well. Some people sometimes don’t hear correctly what is actually said—a kind of selective hearing—or they forget what was said. The leader himself has recordings of the stories, and perhaps other participants in the group do too, but certainly not everyone, and the written word is a good way to ensure accuracy. Therefore, I will continue to publish poems and articles here on my blog, but also stories from my childhood, youth, adulthood, and current life.