- Joined
- Jan 24, 2021
- Messages
- 2,304
As if your life depended on it.
I see a lot of confusion, a lot of chaos, a lot of fear, loneliness, depression, anxiety and pain. In the people I meet, the people I know, and the people I come across online, especially on this board. People who are trying to pull everything together and take themselves to a better place, and sometimes, find themselves unable to deal with the setbacks.
It's been a tough time mentally for almost everyone I know, including myself.
What I have found for myself to be the biggest difference between staying on the horse and falling off it, is my story.
..
My story is the blood that flows in my veins, the ligaments that hold my bones together, the narrative that fuses together all the actions I take into one coherent picture.
It is like a current that carries me along, even when my legs are hardly capable of taking another step. It lends grace to every defeat I suffer, meaning to every event that occurs in my life, good or bad. It turns what is merely pathetic into something tragic, what is ordinary into something extraordinary, what is mortal into something godly. It lends sweet depths of meaning to the smallest actions I take, it fills me with satisfaction with the smallest victories, while making me hungry for more. It fills my life with purpose, with continuity, and it fuses all the tasks and actions of my life into my mission.
What is a story? Imagine the world is a stage, and you are the main character in the plot of a story. Now imagine your character suffers some kind of defeat or setback. Is this the end of the story? Of course not! Does this mean the character is a loser who is not capable of overcoming it? Of course not! The entire point of the defeat is to challenge the character to be better, to become the hero, to reach the climax and the victory.
Imagine if in movies, when a character had to deal with something difficult, they caved in and accepted defeat. That would be nonsensical! The whole point of their being there in the movie is to overcome it. That's what the story is all about!
The story is the goal, not you. The story exists somewhere outside you, not in space and time, but within the fabric of meaning itself. You are merely its agent. You bring it into existence with your actions, and in turn, it elevates you to something more than your mortal self is capable of being. There is nothing wrong with it having a beginning and an end, otherwise it would be meaningless! What matters is what happens in between. What matters is how your actions weave it into existence. And in turn, it takes your flesh and blood and bones, and turns it all into something more than simply a collection of parts, something more than the sum of its parts.
Your story is what conquers your fear, what makes you willing to sacrifice everything to bring something beautiful into existence, something that you yourself are not equal to, and yet cannot exist without you. Your story elevates you from a pawn of chaos into a heroic agent of transformation and meaning. Your story is the foundation of your frame, it speaks like a god through your imperfect physical form. It captures the imagination of men and women, speaks to a need and desire in them that transcends explanation or measure, it fills a mechanical seduction with romance and passion, and fills a bleak, gray world with color.
Your story enables you to experience pleasure and pain as if they were both food for your soul. It turns resentment into righteous anger, abject fear into a lesson in humility, confusion into an opportunity to create order, desperate loneliness into self awareness, emptiness into satisfaction. It gives purpose to your beginning, and nobility to your end.
Attend to your story. Build it relentlessly, maintain it carefully, and when you are laid low, let its untiring legs carry you far and wide, through storms that would tear your soul out of your body, past demons who would swallow you whole, to a place of meaning, self-acceptance, and real satisfaction.
I see a lot of confusion, a lot of chaos, a lot of fear, loneliness, depression, anxiety and pain. In the people I meet, the people I know, and the people I come across online, especially on this board. People who are trying to pull everything together and take themselves to a better place, and sometimes, find themselves unable to deal with the setbacks.
It's been a tough time mentally for almost everyone I know, including myself.
What I have found for myself to be the biggest difference between staying on the horse and falling off it, is my story.
..
My story is the blood that flows in my veins, the ligaments that hold my bones together, the narrative that fuses together all the actions I take into one coherent picture.
It is like a current that carries me along, even when my legs are hardly capable of taking another step. It lends grace to every defeat I suffer, meaning to every event that occurs in my life, good or bad. It turns what is merely pathetic into something tragic, what is ordinary into something extraordinary, what is mortal into something godly. It lends sweet depths of meaning to the smallest actions I take, it fills me with satisfaction with the smallest victories, while making me hungry for more. It fills my life with purpose, with continuity, and it fuses all the tasks and actions of my life into my mission.
What is a story? Imagine the world is a stage, and you are the main character in the plot of a story. Now imagine your character suffers some kind of defeat or setback. Is this the end of the story? Of course not! Does this mean the character is a loser who is not capable of overcoming it? Of course not! The entire point of the defeat is to challenge the character to be better, to become the hero, to reach the climax and the victory.
Imagine if in movies, when a character had to deal with something difficult, they caved in and accepted defeat. That would be nonsensical! The whole point of their being there in the movie is to overcome it. That's what the story is all about!
The story is the goal, not you. The story exists somewhere outside you, not in space and time, but within the fabric of meaning itself. You are merely its agent. You bring it into existence with your actions, and in turn, it elevates you to something more than your mortal self is capable of being. There is nothing wrong with it having a beginning and an end, otherwise it would be meaningless! What matters is what happens in between. What matters is how your actions weave it into existence. And in turn, it takes your flesh and blood and bones, and turns it all into something more than simply a collection of parts, something more than the sum of its parts.
Your story is what conquers your fear, what makes you willing to sacrifice everything to bring something beautiful into existence, something that you yourself are not equal to, and yet cannot exist without you. Your story elevates you from a pawn of chaos into a heroic agent of transformation and meaning. Your story is the foundation of your frame, it speaks like a god through your imperfect physical form. It captures the imagination of men and women, speaks to a need and desire in them that transcends explanation or measure, it fills a mechanical seduction with romance and passion, and fills a bleak, gray world with color.
Your story enables you to experience pleasure and pain as if they were both food for your soul. It turns resentment into righteous anger, abject fear into a lesson in humility, confusion into an opportunity to create order, desperate loneliness into self awareness, emptiness into satisfaction. It gives purpose to your beginning, and nobility to your end.
Attend to your story. Build it relentlessly, maintain it carefully, and when you are laid low, let its untiring legs carry you far and wide, through storms that would tear your soul out of your body, past demons who would swallow you whole, to a place of meaning, self-acceptance, and real satisfaction.
