What's Your Story

What's your story? Is it a tragedy, a comedy, a romance, a thriller, a who-dun-it, a history? Is it totally engaging or is it something you can pick up and set down anytime?

One of the things I am acutely aware of is that hanging on to any story, whether it is deemed to be 'good' or 'bad' seems to be the root of a great deal of pain, confusion and unhappiness in people's lives. When the story feels good, there is a reluctance to let it go or to have it change so there is a clinging that is impossible to maintain because life is a constant flow in its physical expression, always shifting and changing. The same is true when the story doesn't feel very good or is downright tragic; I've noticed a great reluctance in most people to let those go as well which doesn't really make sense on the surface but is much easier to understand when you look a little deeper.

When you are caught up in your story, no matter what type of story it is, there is usually a sense of being that story. Your I am is totally identified with your story so no matter how painful it is you hang on because you think it's who you are and if you don't have this identity then what?

Before a deeply rooted identity can be released and seen for what it is, just a story,  there usually has to a major crisis or the illusion that there's a better story to cling to. But what if that isn't the truth about you either?  Ah, now we enter the land of the unknown which, for various reasons, most of us decided at some point or other was not a safe zone. So the need to keep the storyline going at all costs becomes tantamount and deliverance from the confines of whatever story we are telling ourselves about who we are is averted. Phew! Dodged that bullet! Who wants to be free of the story of ME?