A sobering reality for memoirists: Everyone’s dysfunctional

A person I respect and love dearly said one day, “Every family is dysfunctional. Every family.”

I said to myself That can’t be true.

But within seconds I realized she was correct. Each family is dysfunctional—each person is dysfunctional—some in big ways, some in smaller ways.

To complicate matters, we all have blind spots—we can’t see our own quirks—our malfunctions, aberrations, incongruities, blips, irregularities, inconsistencies, impairments, or distortions.

I give a huge shout-out to those who understand they have big or little imperfections as well as blind spots and who work hard to improve. I applaud you!

To those who are too proud to admit they could be dysfunctional, Thomas Larson suggests we examine where we’ve allowed self-delusion to shape our identities and memories (The Memoir and the Memoirist).

It’s easy to identify those with glaring malfunctions, and we need to write about some of those people in our memoirs.

But even the most functional people—the most “together” people—have little glitches that make them imperfect. We need to write about some of those people in our memoirs, too.

Think about the bosses you’ve had, people you’ve worked with, people you’ve traveled with, people you’ve lived with. College buddies, fellow cheerleaders, people you go to church with.

In even the finest of them you might see glimpses of being:

• controlling/bossy
• impatient
• gruff
• proud
• lacking in self-control
• narcissistic
• stretching the truth

Think about siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, in-laws, children, grandchildren. In even the finest of them, you might see hints of:

• being enablers
• having a “poor me” attitude, a victim mentality,
• being touchy/overreacting
• being aloof/underreacting
• snobbish
• bitter and unforgiving
• obsessed/addicted: spending money or eating/drinking/drugging to ease pain
• yielding to peer pressure, longing to fit in

Think of neighbors, best friends, doctors, bus drivers, CEOs, people who have married into your family. People in your Bible study or your book club or your writing group. In even the finest of them you might detect traces of them being:

• unpredictable/unreliable
• cowardly
• gullible
• vengeful
• prejudiced
• judgmental/holier-than-thou

People whose blogs you follow. Facebook friends, Twitter friends. In even the finest of them you might see glimpses of them being:

• power-hungry
• overly competitive
• defined by their appearances, accomplishments, possessions
• insecure
• driven

Even people we love with all our hearts

have at least mild shortcomings—

spouses, parents, siblings, kids,

grandkids, in-laws, best friends.

But here’s the sobering part: You and I are dysfunctional, too.

All those people we’ve been thinking about—our bosses, our co-workers, people we’ve traveled with, college buddies, people we go to church with—they have extended grace upon grace to you and to me despite our dysfunctions and our blindness to them.

Our siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, in-laws, children, grandchildren—they have all extended grace to us despite our offenses.

Our neighbors, best friends, doctors, bus drivers, people who have married into our families, people in our Bible study or book club or writing group—they have all extended grace to us despite our rough edges and flaws.

Since you are dysfunctional and I am dysfunctional,

let’s recognize the grace and longsuffering

others have extended to us.

Let’s be grateful for their patience and forgiveness,

for the second chances they’ve given us.

Let’s remember The Golden Rule,

doing unto others as you would have them do to you,

or, as it reads in The Living Bible:

“Treat others as we would want them to treat us”

(Luke 6:31, Matthew 7:12).

And in The Voice:

“Think of the kindness you wish others would show you;

do the same for them.”

Let’s write about them

in the way we’d like them to write about us.

Let’s offer others grace,

let’s be patient with them, forgive them,

and give them second chances in our hearts

as well as

in the way we write about them in our memoirs.