Writing and Good Deeds

I have been doing a lot of family research lately, and coming across a lot of road blocks in finding information about my ancestors. Granted, some of those roadblocks are in the form of a paywall, but more often than not the problem is that the information just isn't available. Either the physical record was lost to the ages, or it was never digitized along with apparently every other piece of paper in existence, or nobody cared to write down the details. Whatever the case may be, the information vanishes into the cosmos, never to be seen again. What happened to my great-aunt Olivia? We may never know. Did I have a great-uncle Southard? Well, good question and very little evidence that I will ever discover the answer. Even with the grand power of the internet, there are limits.

Now, while many of these official records have vanished, a number of unofficial records remain intact - in some cases the original is still in my possession. Nobody knew that my great-uncle's son Elijah had a twin sister until I found that little piece of paper that talked about her birth, her death the following day, and the funeral arrangements. Someone took the time to write down the service they wanted for this infant, and someone took the time to put that paper into the pages of the family Bible. My great-uncle's daughter may have only lived for one day in 1899, but thanks to that sheet of paper, she is still known here in 2025.

I hope you can see where this is going. You see, I am a firm believer that no good deed is ever forgotten. And to be quite honest, I believe that we often do not understand what a good deed is when we do it. However, when we do things with intention and from a position of upright principles, they are usually considered good things, and they have repercussions on down the road. We might never see our deeds bear fruit, but that's not what life is about - in my opinion anyway. I am a believer in that old adage of planting olive trees even though I will never last long enough to enjoy their shade. As writers, we have a grand tool to do this very task - we commit our thoughts and ideas to the written word.

Now, I often get pushback from people who insist they have nothing significant to write about; they have no story to tell. Well, tell that to my great-uncle's daughter who lived for one day. She barely had a story, much less an important one, but that one piece of paper makes her memorable. Our existence is what makes us worth writing about. The fact that other people circle around us makes them worth writing about. 

In summary, when someone says, "My story isn't important," I give them a polite response that goes along these lines: "When you say your story isn't important, you are focusing on the word, 'story.' Try focusing on the word, 'your,' because that's the important part. It's yours, and that alone makes it a story worth writing."

So, if you are looking for some good deeds to do, you can plant those olive trees (which I found out require a surprising amount of maintenance), or you can write about people. Write down those stories, those details. Memorialize them. Give them a chance to live forever. That's a pretty good deed.