A little reflection on self and storytelling...

Trying on someone else's hat...

"Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road": I've picked Lao Tzu and Gandhi to write about today. I think about their words often, as they have helped me define how I want to think about myself over the years. That task of definition has been constant and can only resonate truthfully if it intersects something true in me at my core. The dilemma is in knowing what is ever-changing and what is core...

When I let go of what I am,
I become what I might be.

--Lao Tzu

Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.

--The Mahatma (Gandhi)

"Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go": I wake up and I put on my self somewhere between pulling on my right sock and brushing my teeth... That self which is the construction of all that I have done and have chosen to hold on to (plus a great deal that has been imprinted on me both wonderful and terrible—falling into an icy stream [sad face] and being rescued from that same stream by Steve B. [happy face.])...

"So make the best of this test, and don't ask why": The self we cloth ourselves in each day as we awake is reflexive and familiar. Self: you know, the stories and identity that we have rehearsed for as long as we have been storytellers to ourselves and to those around us who would listen...

"It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time": Of course, there are those stories we tell to impress ourselves; and when our psyche sees that the story is good, we trot it out for others to consume. At times we repeat these tales whenever a situation calls for it, often forgetting that the listeners have heard them over and over. We never seem to tire of these impressive stories, but our audience might if they do not see the whimsical value in the ever morphing yarns...

"It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right": And there are the stories we tell that indicate the kind of context we wish to be seen in that helps educate and illuminate our audience as to why our present looks like it does. These stories are repeated and refined over time such that they become as meaningful as myths, and at times as fantastical... (I did in fact walk downhill to school both ways when I was a kid.)...

"I hope you had the time of your life": So the crux of this storytelling we do is that our attachment to some of our oldest and most dear stories may in fact be keeping us from finding the self that is here, now, present. The old stories cease to illuminate and illustrate, and instead, act as a cement on the old self that should be ever-changing. Context yields to definition and we become fixed, despite the dynamic world we are interacting with each moment...