Our Next Generation need to know many stories that we carry with us.
There is a burning desire in every one of us in telling the story of life of someone very special that has significant meaning for us. If we search, we can find individuals who lived their life to pave our way for a better life. If we just concentrate on what was about someone that impacted our worldview, we will find people in our circle of family and friends.
There are many individuals whose life made ours better, we should keep their legacy alive. There are numerous men and women among every nation who do extra ordinary work because they are / were extra ordinary ones.
In western cultures, these people get acknowledged, but not in our Iranian ones. We do our best; still we need more organization and management in this area.
Myself, I wish to look at a woman’s life, someone who has left a great legacy behind. She was a brave woman. . She was a woman of dignity and self-respect. She was a humble and ordinary woman. Her story illustrates constant challenges and hard work. This woman she showed strength and willingness to stand up for herself, despite the dangers out there. This is simply a life story of a regular Iranian woman, however, a brave, strong, and resilient woman who deserves to be introduced to our next generation. Her style of life followed a pattern of self-formulation and self-determination. The search for happiness and meaning made her special at least in my mind; because no one could do what she did.
In storytelling, it is however important to remember that there is no attempt to picture or idealize someone or to create a super hero. We can write about real individuals whose life was a silent action against oppression and status quo. For my part, I will tell the story of ordinary people with ordinary needs like the rest of our human community.
I encourage the readers of this article to do the same type of documentation for our next generations. We can write about the experiences and existence of our parents, uncles, aunts, and whose being had a significant meaning for us. Our writings however should be accurate, objective, and unbiased, as much as we can. That said, we need to recognize our own ideas from what has been expressed to us or what has been observed.
We have a responsibility to keep our story telling culture alive, story of real women and men, story of people who learned to fight for their rights just through insight and self-respect.
I encourage you to document life stories so that our younger generations would be able to get to know our ancestors, something that my generation or the generations prior to our parents missed.
For this reason I want to Introduce Mamman Aziz to you, in the next article.
This story is a vivid memory of a grandmother who was giving her granddaughters ideas about her internal world, her family, and her childhood with help of stories. The main goal of this retelling is to keep the legacy of a woman who taught me how to be strong.
Keep reading.
April 25, 2009
Poran Poregbal
www.middlepeace.com
In story telling it is important to acknowledge our subjective view on how the events unfold. Remember, despite all the attempts, this story is for no reason objective since it is only a lifelong encapsulated memory.
