Everyone knows I'm crazy for stories. Can't get enough of them. What is it that makes them so irresistable? I know I'm not alone -- our whole culture, our whole species is crazy for stories. We need them like we need air and water. I'm not at all sure we could live for very long if we somehow totally lost access to stories.
Our lives are stories, and we tell those stories to ourselves and to each other constantly. Virtually every conversation anyone has is a story or part of a story about ourselves and about others. Stories validate us, they remind us we're alive, but they're even more than that. We're creating our stories as we go, on the fly, moment by moment. This episode, now this one, and the next one, and this little complication, and now this huge dramatic moment, and our recovery from that, and the story goes on. And on.
So, although I have dedicated myself recently to the task of making up stories, of creating them for amusement and entertainment and maybe even enlightenment, it turns out I'm only one of many. One of billions, as a matter of fact. Which is quite all right with me.
One of the things I have bumped into, trying to learn how to tell stories, is the idea that it's possible to reflect on our lives and see them as unfolding stories, and that we have the power then to rise higher and higher into our real roles as storytellers of our own lives. We can, and probably should, get good at creating our own stories.
Psychologists call it "scripting your life". That's only one phrase to describe it, but it's a useful one. Cast yourself as the highly likeable and wonderfully competent lead in your own play: the play of your life. Then script it every day, every moment even. It's fun being a playwrite. Try it!
Okay. I want to indulge myself for a moment and share a story I just wrote (rewrote, actually - I drafted most of it long ago. It just needed to be completed). You can fine it here.
Love from the Holy Road House.
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2 comments:
I was just thinking about this today! My new daycare job is still sinking in. We have to tell them to sit down and shut up all day so we can 'teach' them about science and nature and the world, but they just fidget and complain until they get the chance to 'play' and imagine themselves in some kind of story world. Hmmm. The kids know.
Amen girl, the kids do know. They're also little rivers determined to flow and (some) teachers are busy little engineers trying to figure out how to divert the natural flow of dozens, hell, hundreds of kids at a time. So what do we get? A world of stagnent pools and ditches. Uh, that definately stretches the metaphore beyond all reasonable boundaries - kids may be rivers, but they're damn well not ditches full of mosquito water. Uh, wild strreams?
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