Biographical Latitude

Are our personal narratives alive?

The me in my story is stagnant. The girl who ate candy in her closet alone waiting for someone to notice she was missing… boring. And so, oh, woes me. Plus, is that really what she did?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe she waited for a bit. But then maybe she made tin foil wrapper creatures, that scaled Shoe Mountains and ruled over Dirty Laundry pioneer towns.

Or maybe she meandered for hours in her imagination and if not for her self-imposed exile she would have become a raving bore.

Plus, who says, we cannot change our story.

The stone solid reality of it is, after all, only of our making. But, we get sooo attached. Like somehow, if we changed THAT, well then, what would we have? What would we tell people? Who would we be?

This happened to me at 9 and this at 12 and when I was fourteen, well that is a very long story, I hope you are sitting down.

We have the right to edit!

Here’s the other thing. The book of life, our life, is a fluid changing thing. Even after we die. Every person we have touched has their own version of us and they tell it from their memory.

So doesn’t it make sense while we are here to make it inspiring or touching or outrageous or all of the above? It doesn’t have to be one thing. It can be a cartoon one day and a romance novel the next.

It can morph from a graffiti mural to sidewalk chalk art. Chapters that were once 150 pages of tragedy can become a parenthetical aside.

It’s not about prettying it up or pretending bad stuff did not happen.

It’s about letting go.

A lot of other stuff has to come first, like confusion, rage, sadness and time.

AND, I don’t think this is a one-time event. You let go and like a boomerang it comes back. My husband and I used to call it the circular learning curve, where, just when you think you’ve made progress it swings back and hits you in the ass.

BUT, a while back someone suggested it was more of a spiral. So, although we may be knee-deep in the same themes, if we do it with a whole-hearted commitment, we do make progress.

Lately, my progress has come in recognizing my own emotional cycles and instead of bracing myself to fight them or hunkering down to survive them, I try to accept them.

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

 

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

 

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

 

Be grateful for whatever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

 

— Jelaluddin Rumi,   translation by Coleman Barks

Consider the guides from beyond.

This is a tough one. It sounds so reasonable. It’s all good and well when you’re being guided through fields of daisies. But loss, malice, injustice, unintentional cruelty and unrelenting depression? That’s a different kind of hosting.

I often resist and rarely do it with grace when I do. But I am deeply committed. Because a good part of myself believes that perhaps some previous incarnation of our self sets up these obstacles as opportunities to move more deeply into who we are.

And sometimes, you have to step back, turn around, and try something else!

Consider radical excavation.

When we went to Machu Picchu two years ago, one of the most striking features was that 60% of the brilliant civil engineering was done underground with deep foundational walls to prevent damage in earthquakes and crushed rock for drainage.

It was mind-blowing that with all the intelligent beauty and functional design we could see, the majority of it was completely invisible. Isn’t this true of our stories too? Isn’t there more than meets than the eye?

What if we went mining?

We could dig into the living past of our lineage or our imaginary lives or past lives or relationship with nature, animals– any previously imperceptible element that has actually forged who we are.

What about when we feel forged out of silly putty?

When we are feeling particularly vulnerable, which for me, is at least two weeks in every month, I allow myself to go underground and consider an upside-down, unorthodox world of power.

Kind of like the trees that lose all their leaves and gather energy at their roots in the winter, accept it is a monthly winter in my world.

What if we became our own heroes?

I don’t be mean in some cheesy new-agey way. I mean literally.

And I don’t mean the kind of hero that magically eliminates circumstances and changes your status from single to married or married to divorced or overeater to skinny minny. Or doing fine to independently wealthy.

I don’t mean it to be some kind of knight in shining armor savior.

I mean the real deal.

The real champion celebrates you as is. Accepts who for who you are right now.

Waiting for someone to come tell you it’s okay that you sometimes eat raw brownie batter until you feel a little nauseous? Put on a cape on and say, okay.

Waiting for someone to be okay when you feel inconsolably sad and hopeless for no apparent reason? Don your iron suit, carry yourself to the nearest couch and say, okay.

Let go. Accept. Reinvent.  Begin the story of your life, again.