A year or so back, frequently kept awake, not to say alarmed, by the shuffling footsteps of the Grim Reaper just outside my bedroom door (not knocking just yet, but halfway through his last cigarette, certainly), I set out, perhaps as a naked bribe to Whomever Is In Control, to put down the sad sordid details of my 58 years on God’s green earth. Maybe, I harbored a secret hope that, if I came clean about all the evil I had unleashed on the earth and her minions, the Deity would see fit to give me - not a reprieve, mind you, for I ask not of that - but what the Vikings wished, "a good death". If not slaying a dragon or saving a Princess from her tower (for these are not as popular these days), then saving a baby from a burning house or, failing that, instant and complete cardiac arrest after a lusty bout of carnal congress. That, surely, would be a really good death.

Now, any man who sets about such a task with any degree of sincerity is, by definition, a vain, silly fellow indeed. If he thought about it for more than a split-second, he would instantly see how ridiculous the effort was on several fronts. First, unless he is a man of fame or infamy, or high (or low) achievement, who on earth would want to read these babblings. For heaven’s sake there are, after all, 6 billion or so of we Homo egomaniacus scurrying about this particular anthill and 99.99999 per cent are about as interesting as the gas chromatographic analysis of used dish water. When we - the many and the stupefying - have finished our grand soliloquy, what will be the fate of the collection of lies and vainglorious self-indulgence thus produced? While there may be thousands lining up to read the sleazy particulars of Paula Jones’ or Monica Lewinsky’s adventures in lust with a certain ex-President and there may be hundreds lining up to read Stedman’s memoirs or "Life with Oprah" and dozens more may clamor in the "Land of the Single-Wide and the Pick-up Truck" for yet another book about Anna Nicole, one is forced to ask: who would want to read about a burned-out, bored doctor who would rather write rambling articles about his pet peeves than care for the sick and the infected? Tragedy (real or imagined), scandals, incest, murdering your wife and her boyfriend, stealing from stockholders (or taxpayers), boffing a President and successful gold-digging sells autobiographies. When a story can’t claim anything approaching that lofty plane, it is a non-starter. It would be a waste of time at its best and a waste of paper at its worst.

Second, all autobiographies are little more than low fiction. Other than the basic facts (date and place of birth, the names of parents, siblings. and pets, schools attended, et cetera), the entire contents of the treatise is sure to be pure fantasy. It is every autobiographer’s goal, as it for every male in pursuit of a Fraulein, every politician in pursuit of votes and every human that leaves his house to parade among the "great unwashed", to go to great efforts to conceal his true self and present the best doppleganger he can conjure up. With decent fiction out there to be enjoyed by the neanderthals in search of distraction from their menial, boring lives, why would anyone want to read the really bad fiction of a nobody? I struggle, mightily, to appreciate the existence of such an audience.

Third, there is quite enough mundane biography already written and published to last the fans of the genre for decades. Every failed American Idol - in fact, every failed contestant of every one of the so-called "reality" shows - has belched out a ghostwritten tome detailing all the petty drama and banal tragedies of their ordinary lives shined to a high gloss. These comic books portray their super-human efforts to overcome the lowly status of their birth to a drug-addled she-wolf in an Iowa cornfield to rise above the Babbitts of the world and become the "celebrities" - such as they are - today. Every politician (elected or recently turned out of office), Hollywood starlet (on the rise or, better, on the outs), corporate executive (successful or failed) and sports hero at every level has hired some hack writer to inscribe the tear-stained "story of their lives" for the edification of their congregation of fans or the bemusement of their critics. Why would someone who has absolutely no "star quality" (whatever that may be in today’s society) set about writing a similar fabrication? Especially, when they have no breathless fan base to read their fable of triumph over tragedy? Better, if he has any talent to write at all, he hire himself out to the celebrity de jour and get paid to write someone else’s lies. There is clearly more money in it.

Knowing all these negatives going in and fully aware that the only people with even a modest interest in the final work would be friends and family who might, for whatever personal reasons (the number one reason being a curiosity to see if they might be mentioned in it), feel the urge to plod through such a compilation of half-truths and downright misinformation, I still had the pathological urge to go through with the project. Ego drives many a farce. Nevertheless, I am happy to report that the grand work - the "Autobiography of an Unknown" - has been completed.

Mind you, no one will ever see it until I have safely shed this earthly veil and gone on to whatever rewards await me in the Valhalla. I was a little too honest to let loose my ruminations on the world prior to returning to my most basic ingredients, ashes to ashes, dust to dust bunny. Mark Twain - and what better writer is there to quote - said that "No man is completely honest until he is dead. And, then, only after he has been dead for several years." As usual, he was right and my twaddle was written under the working hypothesis that I was writing from the grave side: the plan was to toss the finished product from the hole just as the first shovel of dirt fell on my head. Even with that mindset, actual truth, the kind that slaps you in the face to remind you that you were always a bit of a wanker, was often painfully elusive.

But, I plodded onward. Writing the story of such a ordinary life teaches the author several important things which, I suppose, is the main reason the project was undertaken. Perhaps the main reason was my continued mystification with what the Greeks actually meant when they inscribed "Know Thyself" at the temple at Delphi. It has haunted me for decades. Well, maybe not "haunted" but it sure made me try to figure out its meaning. Does it, at the most carnal level, mean "know thyself" in the Biblical sense, as in "David knew Bathsheba"? Is it suggesting frequent autoeroticism? Probably not. Does it mean that if you know yourself - your weaknesses, your appetites, your morality - you can better understand your fellow heathens? That is to suggest that if you know what a scoundrel you are at your very core, you might be more compassionate when you witness the lunacy of your colleagues. The premise stretches even my well-developed sense of credulity but, I suppose, it is possible.

A final thought might be that, if one really "knows" oneself, you can better forgive yourself. That is the interpretation I, personally, enjoy the best. We are, after all, just human. We are a swirling mass of bad information, faulty nurturing, aspirations not founded in reality, abounding insecurities, monumental weaknesses, physical and mental limitations. Yet, when we do royally screw up, we spend the rest of our lives beating ourselves up and asking the unanswerable: "How could I be so stupid?" The answer to that is simple: "Because you are human." Once you understand - know to the marrow of your bones - that simple truth, it is easier to forgive ourselves. To paraphrase, "Let he who is without error be the first to cast blame." Trust me. If we are honest with ourselves, no one is going to step forward and point fingers in your directions for some act of stupidity that has been reenacted millions of times before.

The absolute best reason to undertake the exertion of writing the story of your life is for the simple reason that it can be therapeutic. When you map out all the large and small events of your days, you can discern patterns that you may not have been aware of, at least consciously. If you write, at least initially, in a "stream of consciousness" format - putting down everything that comes to mind without attention to the trivial, grammar, dates and the like - you can really unlock some nuances and subtle influences of your life.

I understand that I begin to sink to the level of pop psychology here. It brings to mind the "alarming" (for some) statistics of the ominous pseudo-rise of ADD or AHDD or, the latest inane acronym, AHDD-related symptoms - which, as I understand it, can explain everything from nail-biting to the annoying habit of the youth to crave separation and quiet from the harangues of their parental units. As when perfectly healthy adolescent boys (and they are almost always boys), fidget in class simply in anticipation of being liberated from their tedious toil so that might be liberated from class and tie cans to a dog’s tail or, in the truly afflicted, firecrackers. The cure: Pour a little Ritalin or Adderall down the unsuspecting tykes and, instantly, two worthy goals are accomplished. First, the teachers’ jobs get easier and, two, mothers and father everywhere can sleep peacefully at night knowing little Johnny is sleeping the dreams of the angels.

But, I digress. With autobiography, great rewards await. You have the unique chance to assess what you remember about a childhood trauma against what actually happened. You can ask your parents, friends and others privy to the unemotional, detached recollection of your personal bugaboos. I have concluded, in my personal journey down the path, that memory is far inferior to the actual facts. What has been haunting our nights and disturbing our days is, in the cold recollection of those who were present, not quite the psyche-fracturing, life-changing trauma that it has been imagined for, lo, these 50 years.

Thus, there is a unique form of therapy to be had with writing an autobiography. All the events, which seemed to be earth-shattering in the memories carried over and embellished for years - the very Plymouth Rocks to which we relate all our subsequent life’s choices and paths back to, usually turn out to be significantly overblown. Our subconscious minds construct a series of Mount Everests when, in point of fact, we are wound up in tiny molehills. When viewed in the perspective of stark reality - not of our regressed, childlike, fixed-in-time mind - but in the cold light of reason and recall of one who was there, Everest shrinks back to his natural height, about an inch high and almost totally forgotten by the ones who shared it with you. When viewed in its deserved, naked state, even the traumas of childhood, puffed up in our imaginings like the Hindenburg, the very events that molded our adult lives, become much easier to comprehend, then, to release and forget. They can be burned to the ground, like their namesake and, finally, the sufferers of childhood delusion can see the memory for the heavy chains they have been and throw them off. As a result, perhaps, one can begin to move forward as a human and as an adult.

This, in a nutshell, has been the joy of my trivial pursuit. I have discovered much about myself and my personal hang-up, beliefs long tethered to faulty and flawed moorings. When we are able to reexamine these albatrosses which we all carry about our necks and that hold us back from our "true selves" (whatever that might actually turn out to be), we are better humans for it. When we let go of all the garbage - all the childhood preconceptions, prejudices and hobgoblins - only then can we begin to move forward to that ephemeral happiness we all fervently and desperately seek.

Laugh your fool heads off if you want. I will keep doing the fact-checking of my tedious and painfully ordinary life. "Thar’s gold in them thar hills" and I am still of a mind that they are worth chiseling out. And there is no better method than to write your own autobiography and solicit the help of fact checkers who know the truth. Reality may chase away many of your favorite scapegoats but, after they have disappeared from view, you can set about the hard work of forgiving yourselves for your very human errors. "Know thyself". It doesn’t hurt as much as you might think.

And, undertaking the process, we can begin to understand Socrates’ ancient admonition that "The unexamined life is not worth living."