Storytelling

The stories we tell ourselves are enormously powerful. For example:

For most of my life I found myself, on the basis of a single (romantic) encounter or very limited involvement, telling myself a story about “the future.” She was “the one,” we were going to be “forever,” she was “perfection,” we were “amazing” together… all because that was the story I wanted. Those stories were enormous burdens to lay on another’s shoulders, and it warped and ultimately destroyed every “storied” relationship. That led to other stories I’d tell myself: I wasn’t good enough, love wasn’t for me, love wasn’t worth it, my life was over.

I’m learning to tell new stories, now, and I’m trying to avoid telling stories about the future. The stories I tell are more like this: “What a nice evening.” “This is an awesome moment.” “I’m happy right now.” “This feels good.”

These stories are short stories, but they’re true stories. They’re stories about the moment. They leave space for the possibility of love, even of mutual love, but they don’t assume it and don’t place an undue burden on another or myself. And I find these short, true stories make disappointment a lot less bitter, because I'm not invested in an entire narrative arc.

The future is unwritten and unpredictable. Staying in the moment helps me deal with uncertainty, far better than does constraining it to my self-serving narrative. I want that brass ring relationship and I’m wide open to it, but I’m not trying any longer to make any encounter fit some script. If it comes, it’ll come as a natural consequence of the episodes we write moment by moment, encounter by encounter.

As with everything else in my current life, this is a practice. It isn’t an achievement I unlock by winning a boss battle, it isn’t a destination I reach after a journey: it’s a routine, a discipline, a practice. I start wherever I am at any given moment and do what is in me to do, and that is sufficient.

It matters, what stories I tell. The stories I tell are the meaning I make of my experience, my existence.

Life is less like a symphony, more like jazz, less like a play and more like improv. And that’s awesome!