The title sounds like a much more sophisticated version of the question,
“Where do you see yourself in the next five years?”
Doesn’t it?
Except this time…
You don’t have to prepare the perfect answer.
No interview.
No polished version of yourself.
No carefully chosen strengths to impress anyone.
Just…
Your life.
Exactly as it happened.
I think about this more often than I’d like to admit.
Maybe that’s why I’m writing this.
Tell me honestly.
If someone handed you a book with your name on the cover…
Would you read it?
I know I would.
But probably not for the reasons most people would.
I wouldn’t flip straight to the chapters about success.
Or promotions.
Or awards.
Or the moments where everything worked out perfectly.
I’d search for the pages that talked about the version of me nobody saw.
The days I couldn’t get out of bed.
The nights I cried into my pillow, hoping tomorrow would somehow feel lighter.
The moments when life quietly broke me into pieces before teaching me how to put myself back together.
The nights that felt too long.
Or the nights I secretly wished wouldn’t end because I wasn’t ready to wake up and face another day.
Because strangely…
Those are the chapters that make someone feel real.
When I read about someone’s struggles, I don’t think,
“What a sad life.”
I think,
“This person is human.”
“This person is a little like me.”
Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to people’s stories.
Not because they’re extraordinary.
But because somewhere in their pain, we quietly recognise our own.
Of course…
I’d also want to read about the dreams that eventually came true.
The goals I spent years chasing.
The things I once prayed for but later forgot I had received.
The person I slowly became without even noticing.
Sometimes we’re so busy looking at how far we still have to go…
That we completely forget how far we’ve already come.
Now here’s a confession.
Please don’t judge me.
I genuinely think I’m one of the silliest people on this planet.
Half the time I’m wondering how kitchen chimneys work.
The other half I’m imagining aliens interviewing humanity or wondering whether we’re all living inside someone else’s experiment.
So the idea of someone writing an entire biography about me feels…
Ridiculous.
Who would voluntarily read hundreds of pages about a woman whose brain jumps from physics to philosophy, from psychology to conspiracy theories, all before finishing a cup of tea?
But then I realised something.
Maybe biographies aren’t written because someone was perfect.
Or famous.
Or powerful.
Maybe they’re written because someone lived honestly.
Because they paid attention to the world.
Because they were curious enough to keep asking questions.
Because they made other people pause and think.
I don’t think the most valuable thing we’ll leave behind is money.
Or a big house.
Or a fancy job title.
Those things eventually belong to someone else.
What stays are the invisible things.
The conversations that changed someone’s day.
The kindness you showed when nobody was watching.
The courage you gave someone simply by sharing your own story.
The way you made someone feel seen.
The laughter people still remember years later.
Perhaps that’s our real legacy.
Not what we owned.
But what remained in people’s hearts after we were gone.
If someone ever wrote my biography…
It would probably describe me as a little crazy.
A little emotional.
A little passionate.
A little too curious for my own good.
Always asking one question too many.
And honestly…
I’d be perfectly okay with that.
Maybe my biography won’t sell millions of copies.
Maybe it’ll never even exist.
But if someone, somewhere, years from now, pauses for a second and says,
“She made me think.”
“She made me smile.”
“She made me look at the world a little differently.”
I think…
That would be a story worth leaving behind.
Because in the end…
We’re all writing our biography one ordinary day at a time…
Without ever realising which page someone else will remember forever.
Anindita Rath
@scrambledwriter
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