As a writer, I understand the power of stories. Stories capture our imagination, stir our emotions, and help us thread together the events of our lives.
What I've been learning recently, though, is that stories are also the cause of most of our suffering.
Who knows how stories originated way back in the dusky twilight of prehistory? Perhaps stories were a way to pass down knowledge of hunting grounds, navigation, ancestral lines (so that horrible genetic mutations wouldn't occur). No way to know for sure.
What came to happen, though, and what continues to happen today, is that we believe our stories. We believe our stories so much, in fact, that we often choose them over reality. That's when suffering occurs.
An obvious example is this: an explicitly insane person believes himself to be Napoleon Bonaparte (and as we all know from that favorite mode of storytelling, the movies, crazy people usually believe they're Napoleon). As our friend begins to navigate his way through life, he generates a lot of suffering for himself since (barring metaphysics) he is not, in fact, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Amusingly enough, we each do the same thing every day. We get caught up and attached to our individual and collective stories, which may or may not have any bearing on reality. More than that, since we believe in our stories so strongly, we forget how easily they can be changed.
My practice lately has been to completely question and re-write the story of my life at will. Any time there's something that pisses me off or aggravates me, I start paying attention to the story I'm telling myself.
Traffic is a great place to do this. I get all riled up about how slow the car in front of me is going, how idiotic the driver is, how inept and hazardous it is that such a driver is on the road. On and on I go until that vein in my temple starts throbbing and my chest starts squeezing. I'm caught up in an epic blitzkreig of rage and justice, revenge and glory. I'm decapiating the other driver, eating her young, slashing her tires, smashing into her car (insurance rates be damned). I am seething, spewing, railing against this absolute embodiment, this archetype, this personifcation of Wretched Driving!
Now that's some story.
When I realize all that energy is coming from the story I'm telling myself, I can relax and rewrite the whole thing. The characters (the other driver and me) are in seperate cars moving through traffic. That's the scenario, the setting, the props. Everything else I'm adding.
That she should be going faster? My addition to the script. The way she's driving is inept and bad--again my embellishment.
What if I turn it around? Tell the story this way? I'm an agressive driver, pissed off, running late. I get behind this woman who is trying to be cautious, keep her children safe. I'm intimidating her, riding her ass, cursing at her the whole way. Her eyes flicker nervously from the road to the maniac in the rear view mirror and back to the road. She's deperately looking for any opening to get out of my way. She doesn't want to be in front of me. I'm stressing her out. She's panicking. Her children are crying. One of them might be choking. She's not sure how she's going to pay this month's rent, and she surely can't afford to be in a car accident...
A totally different story. And you know what? Not a bit more real than the first one.
It's still all my embellishment. It's all my storytelling. When you strip everything away, we're still just man and woman in traffic. Everything else going on is something I've added in my mind. I can't be in the other driver's mind. I have no way of knowing what her feelings and thoughts are. Even if she was screaming back at me, yelling at me in her rearview mirror, I would still not really know what was going on inside her, I'd just know she was screaming and yelling about something.
It's like sometimes when you see someone and you can't tell if they are laughing or crying. The whole story depends on which it is, but you can't tell, and so the story suddenly stops.
Amazing how easy it is to get caught up in and believe our stories. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes it's pure, delightful creativity and entertainment. Nine times out of ten, though, it ruins your fucking day.
So I'm trying now to live with my stories, laugh at them. I'm always asking myself, when I make some sweeping statement or start judging everything around me, "is that really true or is that just my story?" When I feel anger, frustration, irritation swelling up inside of me, I ask myself where it's coming from. It has to be my story, so what's my story?
I'm learning life can be really amazing if you don't tell any stories at all. There's all sorts of stuff going on all the time!
If I do need a story, though, I remind myself that in any given situation I get to choose what it is. Whatever story I choose, that's the story I have to live with...until I pick another!
Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...
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