Autobiography with time

I'm not sure why I think this phrase, which came to me late this afternoon, is any different from "the life and times," but - thinking about memoirs and the like - I wondered how to avoid the solipsism of that genre, and also how to give the dimension of time within life its due. We react to people and places, but it's time that tempers our reaction, not least by showing us different aspects of them. We are variables, too, of course, but our central illusion has us otherwise.