Sic Semper Tyrannis

Man vs. Man, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Himself, Man vs. Nature

As I have been thinking about Ebenezer Scrooge and how marvelous a fictional creation he is I have also ventured into how we tell stories. I think we have stories that we tell about ourselves. (I’m going to use the word “narrative” because that’s the word that college grads use.) I was thinking as I compared my life to Scrooge’s, that “transformation” is a big idea for me now. Indeed I think transformation is an important narrative for many folks: “I once was lost, but now I’m found,” The Biggest Loser, “Rags to Riches,” “I was so much older then/ I’m younger than that now…”

There are other ones floating out in the ether, though: victim of circumstance, “pulled himself up by his bootstraps,” “quiet life of courage,” victim of systems beyond his/her control, “pride before a fall,” the typical VH1 story of success-excess-fall-redemption. I could go on.

I was thinking that these narratives are a form that we overlay on the experiences of our lives to impose order, meaning, and purpose(?) Are the experiences in our life truly random and we just come up with a good way to talk about them? Or is there really a structure underneath our lives, and we are merely naming the structure? Don’t know. Maybe someone else could enlighten me on that one.

But the other thought that has occurred to me is how powerful these narratives can be. How we choose to describe ourselves and our experiences can also shape our future. For instance I said that the “transformation” narrative is the one huge one I use for myself these days. I like that story. It says I’ve come from some place (bad) and have moved to a different place (better.) It gives my efforts and experiences thus far a meaning and a purpose and imbues future efforts and experiences with hope. For me, that’s a sustainable story.

But let me tell you about the other possible narratives that I could use to describe the same life and activities and events: 1) “He worked really hard, lost a lot of weight, all to get down to what is really a baseline level of health and attractiveness for some other people, or 2) “He worked really hard every day, to beat his body into submission, only to learn what it will now take to stay at that level,” or 3) “Every day was a physical fight against bad genes…”

All three of these alternate stories describing the same history can be (and are) true for me. Obviously, the fact that I can recall them shows that they have entered my noggin at various times.

But in an effort to practice responsible, pragmatic story-telling, I’m choosing to ignore them. For I have found one type of story that finally gives me some peace, some happiness. The way I see it, to not rehearse telling that one story to myself and anyone who will listen would be a crime.

Sorry if this all sounds like cheesy, psychobabble, self-help gobbledy-gook. It only sounds like that because it is.

So…what’s your overarching narrative?

posted by Mike @ 3:21 PM