Memoirs: You owe your story to those who come after you

No verse in the Bible reminds me of the temporary nature of life than Psalms 103:16. It is the very epiphany of mortality: “The wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” You are here today, and tomorrow you are no more. It is a reminder that we owe those who come after us our stories of love and service.

It shouldn’t surprise you that I am almost addicted to the BBC’s Outlook programme, which tells memorable stories. Not long ago, I was touched when I listened to an elderly woman in her nineties, her voice a little shaky but still full of light. She spoke of love, loss, resilience, and the kind of small victories that never make it into history books. By the time the programme ended, I realised I had not just listened to an interview, I had been transported into another life.

That is the magic of lived experiences. They give history a heartbeat. They turn statistics into human beings. And they remind us that behind every headline, there are individuals whose journeys are never explained. They tell us what it means to be alive in a particular time and place. And that is why you need to write your story.

The truth is that the world revolves around stories. In boardrooms, classrooms, courtrooms, places of worship, and even in the digital corridors of social media, storying is now the thing. The corporate world refers to it as “narrative branding.” Educators refer to it as “experiential learning.” Preachers call it “testimony.” Social media influencers call it “content.” Strip away the jargon, and you find one constant: the human hunger for a good story.

True. We make sense of our lives through narratives, and we connect with others through shared experiences. Without stories, our existence becomes a blur of disconnected events. It is through stories that we understand where we have come from and imagine where we might be going.

Biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs perform this work with a permanence that trending hashtags cannot match. They preserve memory, not just the neat official record, but the messy, complicated truths of human life. Through them, we learn not only what individuals did, but why they did it, what they feared, what they loved, and what they dreamed of.

Of late, I have been blessed to launch and midwife a number of biographies. The experience has been fulfilling. The latest I midwifed is Moses Mudavadi and the Making of the Maragoli Nation by Charles Karani, which taught me more than what I learned from any textbook on the subject.

My friend Lee Njiru’s memoir, The Presidents’ Pressman, is perhaps the best window through which you can understand the institution of the presidency in Kenya.

Unfortunately, all around us, a silent erosion of memory is taking place. Our historical record is not being lost in great fires or destroyed in dusty archives; it is disappearing in hospital beds, in quiet rural homes, in busy city apartments, wherever untold stories are held in silence.

This makes me regret not helping Kabaji, my father, write his memoirs. He is gone with all his stories.

I think we must confront this uncomfortable truth. Many in our society owe us their life stories. The politicians who are destroying our nation, the teachers who raised generations, the market women who kept communities fed, and the athletes who brought glory to the country.

They all carry pieces of our collective history. When they go without telling, they rob posterity of the understanding of where we have come from and what we have endured.

Everyone, famous or not, has a narrative worth telling. If we only listen to the loudest voices, we miss the quieter truths that make up the fabric of society.

Writing a biography is not an act of vanity. It is an act of service. It is an offering to future generations, a record that says, this is who I was and this is what we were. Reading them is not mere entertainment but therapeutic.

When Chinua Achebe wrote There Was a Country, he was not just writing about himself; he was chronicling the tragedy and lessons of the Biafran War.

When Nelson Mandela wrote Long Walk to Freedom, he was handing the world a map of resilience and leadership. What are you giving the world?

And here is the good news. You do not have to fear that you do not know how to write. You do not need to be a wordsmith to tell your story. Today, we have ghostwriters and professional biographers who do a fantastic job of shaping raw memories into compelling narratives. All you need is the willingness to share honestly. They will help you give your life the structure and clarity it deserves at a fee. But be aware of many masqueraders pretending to know how to write. Choose a good midwife to deliver your story.

You do not need to be a celebrated public figure to write your story. Sometimes the quietest lives contain the most profound lessons. Let us tell our stories, for ourselves and our children, because in the end, when Psalms 103:16 has come to pass, what remains is the love of God and your story.