Sunday 2 November 2014

Cyclical meanderings....... part 7...... telling stories

Those that know me, or have read my words, have often called me a storyteller. It's something that not only do I enjoy hearing, or knowing about myself, it's deeper than that, it's how I see life, it makes up a big part of my perception of reality, we are all stories, partially written, partially unwritten, and none of us knows when our last page will be written.

Some of us can fill hundreds of pages a year, others remain in the same chapter for most of their lives, circling, cycling through the same experiences, patterns, connections, both with themselves and with others.

I don't know how long I've seen the world this way, but I've always told myself stories, I remember doing so as a child, but it's impossible to say why I did it, or why I still do it now, what it means.

Reality is strange, let's face it, that's why religions are so powerful, they give people the story that they should live by, they take away the fear that one day, our story will end, the lights will go out. We often wonder what will happen after we die, I do as well, will the story continue somehow?, but there is something else even more important to wonder, what happened before our story began?. Billions of years have passed before any of us got to start our story, write our first page, say "I'm here, I've arrived". That's pretty freaky, at least it is to me

One of my favorite authors wrote once, "God is the book of the universe". That hit me hard when I read it, especially as an atheist, I don't have that predefined story, it's always been up to me to write it for myself. To me that line means that our stories are all intertwined, twisted up with each other, with our pasts, with our ancestors, with our future, the people whose stories have made ours possible, right back to the beginning, of time, of existence. God is the summation of all of this, the ultimate story, as though we are all part of an incredible story of reality itself, and any part of anyone's story can ultimately affect the universe as a whole.

weird stuff

I'm adding this piece to my cyclical meanderings posts because as usual, none of this is what I wanted to write about, happens a lot to me......

What I wanted to get at are my own personal stories, the ones that live within my head. Not necessarily the ones that become true, in fact, almost none of my personal stories have ever come true, as if they all exist within parallel universes, parallel realities. I've always loved the multiverse concept, strikes me as true. Anyways.....

Like everyone, I have desires, wants, fantasies of what I want my life to be, what I think would be my perfect existence. These manifest within me as detailed stories, without any conscious effort I'll find that my mind is living through a scenario, an encounter, perhaps a conversation with someone, detailing a possible future truth. I see it, I hear each word spoken, I see where it occurs, the catalyst that creates the situation, the outcome, the emotions that go with the entire event. I feel feels that don't actually exist, haven't happened, essentially, it's all in my head. Makes me sound a little nuts doesn't it?

I remember being in high school, college, university, wondering where my life will go, wondering if the person I'm currently romantically involved with with will be the one. That's always been big in my mind, who am I going to share my life with, who will be the warrior, the lover, the partner, that will face this reality with me, will share my story, will change my chapters as I change theirs. Change me, as I change them. My catalyst, as I catalyze so many others.

I would live these possibilities within my mind, imagine them, feel them, and yet, life always surprised me as the story I ended up living was never once, not one single time, what I expected to happen, what I had foreseen. I often read other peoples futures, I see where they are going based on where they are now, and for others, I am so often right, it's as if I can read their minds, read their wants and desires, and see what is in store for them. Again, weird as fuck. But when it comes to me, as introspective and analytical as I am about myself, I'm never right.

This has actually had a pretty negative effect on me in the long run. While I've experienced many absolutely wonderful things in my life, loved and been loved in return, it's never happened as I dreamed about, and due to this, I found that over the years I've stopped dreaming of the good things, the good possibilities, the true desires I have, because if I never foresee what actually happens to me, then each time that I see something that I want, or dream of a future that I want, it's as if I'm cancelling out that possibility. Every single wonderful thing that has happened to me in my life has been a complete surprise, so if I keep dreaming of wonderful things, I almost guarantee that they will not happen.

This has led my internal stories to become darker, instead of dreaming of the good, I dream of the bad, I try to find every possible shitty thing that will happen to me, live it within my own mind, feel the pain and loss, in hopes of cancelling it out, to guarantee that it wont happen. After all, if all the good things that I dream about don't end up happening, all my hopes get rejected by the universe, if I dream of the bad, maybe the same thing will happen to those. I feel happy stories, stories of the direction I truly want my life to take, and I consciously stop them, and turn them dark instead.

The end result of this is that I often live in a sad place within my mind, expecting the worst, feeling emotions based on fear instead of hope. My personal demon of anxiety uses this against me, throwing worst case scenarios at me time and time again. Bringing me lower, deeper into fear. And it sucks

but there is still this belief in me that if I allow myself to dream of beautiful possibilities, that I am destroying them, making sure that they wont happen.

Lately though, the good stories have been coming back, what I want, where I want to be, and they feel good. And it's scary for me to allow them in, allow myself to live internally within a happy place, my self programming is fighting against it, telling me that I'm fucking it all up. We need hope to live, we all do, we can't live in darkness and expectation of things to go bad, it's such a weight to carry.

I think a big problem that I have with all of this is that I focus on those happy realities a little too much, as I am a storyteller, the dreams and possibilities that I see are precise, exact, as if I'm directing a movie within my head with everything perfectly controlled, so if the reality doesn't match exactly, I don't feel the happiness that I wanted to, expected to, and I take it as a loss. Kind of self defeating isn't it?, yeah, I know.....

For my own personal well being, I need to allow myself to have these dreams of beauty, let them override the dreams of darkness and loss, yet at the same time, I need to learn how to not need for the good stories to actually occur exactly for me to feel happiness. I need to see them as lovely dreams, while still accepting the beauty that occurs to me so often, without any regret that it isn't exactly what I wanted, but knowing that my own story is getting brighter, more beautiful, that the possibilities truly are endless

And for every dark possibility, there is a bright one. I will never be able to think of them all, and every now and then when something works out just as I had hoped, or exactly as I had feared, then so be it, just means that particular roll of the dice hit snake eyes, or double sixes, nothing more, nothing less.

but it's a hell of a lot better to live with beautiful possibilities for the rest of my story isn't it?

I'm sure there's a term in psychology for all of this, lol.

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