Tag: stories

On Scars

I just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. In it, a missionary moves his family from Georgia to the Congo in the late 1950s to convert the natives to Christianity. The experience profoundly affects his wife and children, each in a different way.

Near the end of the story, his daughter Adah reflects on the experience, saying, “If chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear marks of the shackles. What you have to lose is your story, your own slant. You’ll look at the scars on your arms and see mere ugliness, or you’ll take great care to look away from them and see nothing. Either way, you have no words for the story of where you came from.”

I couldn’t help but reflect on how this is true in many situations. We all have injuries, some physical and some emotional. And in some way we are all marked by those experiences. Healing isn’t about erasing the experience itself, so much as it is about integrating it. Our hurts are part of us. They aren’t evidence of weakness. They can, in fact, be evidence of strength.

Later, she concludes, “The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.” Thus, if we allow all of our experiences to become part of the tapestry of our lives, we can create something even more beautiful than we might by simply cataloguing our success stories.

There’s a lesson in here, too, about not holding too tightly to our own stories, to our “slant.” If we identify too strongly with a certain role, as victim, or if we cast others as perpetrators, we run the risk of getting too entrenched in our own stories, getting stuck in an emotional and psychological rut.

If we can find the balance, indeed if we can find words to weave our own stories, in full color and complexity, they acquire a richness that serves as inspiration for others, and a catalyst for our own growth and development.

On Storytelling

I’ve been thinking about storytelling since I watched Life of Pi. (Yes, I hear the collective sigh from my former English teachers.) As several wise persons have noted, it’s not so much what happens to us in life, but our response to what happens to us, that reveals our character. And much of how we respond to what happens to us has to do with the stories that we tell ourselves, and others, about the events our lives.

If two stories have the same events, and the same ending, which is true? This is the question in Life of Pi. And the answer: the one you like better is the one that’s true.

There’s a great deal of wisdom in that observation. While we can’t go back and change the past, we can change the lens, change our focus, and thereby also change our understanding and attitude about the things that happen to us.  Our beliefs shape the world and vice versa. The world shapes us, and we also shape the world. What we see we believe. And what we believe we live, and relive, over and over.

Every problem and every difficulty, when turned around, is an opportunity to learn and grow. The question is, do we allow our challenges to dictate our attitudes? Our treatment of others? Our goals and aspirations?

Often we get comfortable with familiar stories. Stock characters. Stories of good and evil. But real life is rarely so black and white. We all have within us capacity for great kindness and great cruelty. Whichever aspects of our consciousness manifest in our behavior is a direct result of the choices we make – the little choices – day in and day out.

Whether you grow your capacity for kindness is up to you.…because what you think upon grows.

The Heat of the Moment

“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.” – Anne Lamott

One of the important things I’d like to think I’ve (mostly) learned over the years is not to make decisions in the emotional heat of the moment.

Sometimes, in the midst of an emotional storm, it’s tempting to take some action, to relieve the pressure of the intensity of our feelings. We can start to mistakenly believe that if we take drastic action, we will arrive at the solution to the problem, whatever it may be.

Unfortunately, this is rarely (if ever) the case. In my own life, I haven’t yet made a decision in a state of emotional turmoil that seemed wise when I considered it later. As an adjunct to this, conflict resolution became much easier when I learned that every thought does not need to be shared aloud. Indeed, there are a great many better left unsaid.

One of the things I noticed when I started meditating was the sheer amount of garbage manufactured by my mind, on an almost constant basis. I daresay this power would be impressive if it could be put to good use – though I think that’s the idea behind affirmations and positive thinking. But sometimes the mind has to be left to just wear itself out spinning crazy, awful stories.

And they are just that: stories. Fortunately, a regular meditation practice helps make that clear, because when we start to believe our own stories we’re treading on dangerous ground.

Eventually the mind grows tired, and we can step out of the “thought-emotion-action” loop, thereby gaining access to our greater wisdom. If we can weather the emotional storm, watching it until it dies down, and acting in the calm after the storm, we stand a better chance of achieving the outcome we truly want.

It’s a process, and a non-linear one at that. In the words of Anne Lamott, “You can get the monkey off your back but the circus never leaves town.”

That’s why they call it a practice.

The Story of Play Doh

In the movie How Do You Know, there’s a scene in which the guy buys the girl a tub of Play Doh. He tells her the story of Play Doh (how it was a failure as a wallpaper cleaner, but then was successfully re-marketed as a children’s toy) and says, “We are all just one small adjustment from making our lives work.”

And though the movie itself isn’t necessarily that profound, that one line has stuck with me since I first heard it. That one line speaks volumes, and it applies to much more than romantic relationships. It really seems to me like a commentary on perspective.

Sometimes our perspective is the biggest thing stopping us from seeing all the good that surrounds us, and using that vision as a springboard to greater success. Being attached to only one perspective is extremely limiting.

There’s a story I once read in which a man walks down a village street. Persons on one side of the street comment on his striking red hat, while those on the other side argue that his hat is blue. Each faction insists on the correct-ness of its interpretation. It’s only when the man turns around and walks back the other way that it becomes clear the hat is half red, half blue.

In a similar story, several people wearing blindfolds each try to explain what an elephant looks like. One describes the trunk, while the other describes the tail. An argument ensues over what type of creature the elephant really is, and who is more correct.

Of course, what these stories are meant to illustrate is the idea that perspective is limited, and that the same object (the same situation or challenge) looks very different when we approach it in a new way. Also, that we make fools of ourselves when we argue right-ness of our own viewpoints or wrong-ness of another’s perspective.

All this is to say that relinquishing attachment to our perspectives, to our stories, is an important step toward building better relationships and creating success. Sometimes it means crossing the street to see challenges or situations in our lives from another angle. Other times it means taking off the blindfold to see the big picture.

It’s worth asking ourselves where many of our deeply held opinions, viewpoints, and beliefs originated, because we may find that the source is a limited perspective. Now, this doesn’t mean abandoning all of our beliefs and principles, but rather approaching them with a greater understanding of where they come from. And, it gives us the opportunity to examine which of those beliefs are working for us, and which others might require some fine-tuning.