Some adults are children at heart, with a purity of heart that would have them live and love the stories of their lives in awe and wonder, with the wisdom of innocence, deriving satisfaction in life from a love and joy of life that brings fulfillment through contentment and enchantment.
Some of these childlike adults like to tell stories; others like to read stories; still others like to be read stories. Some childlike adults even like to write their own stories, as they incline towards adopting and affirming this habit: “I write the story of my life while giving life to my story.”
This uncommon habit can be approached creatively and productively in two ways, with two very powerful affirmations: (1) I live and love the story of my life; and (2) I like and I love who I am in my story. Let us now proceed with due care as we drink the nectar of the gods …
I Live and Love the Story of My Life
I live and love the story of my life: in the ultimate scheme of things, what could be more fulfilling? Many of us, however, indulge the habit of accepting or rejecting propositions and expectations without thinking and, like unwise children, call on others to accept or reject them.
Pushing our own notions of what it means to be reasonable and sensible, we attempt to negotiate and navigate willful immaturity, not from the innocence of nescience, but from the arrogance of ignorance, which is ultimately hateful and spiteful, leading to all manner of delusion.
immaturity, n.: not (yet) fully considered and perfected
nescience, n: a state of not knowing because information is absent or not attainable (not culpable)
ignorance, n.: a state of not knowing even though the necessary information is present, because this information is being willfully refused or disregarded (culpable)
delusion, n.: an erroneous belief held in the face of evidence to the contrary (culpable?)
Again …
Pushing our own notions of what it means to be reasonable and sensible, we attempt to negotiate and navigate willful immaturity, not from the innocence of nescience, but from the arrogance of ignorance, which is ultimately hateful and spiteful, leading to all manner of delusion.
The innocence of nescience, the arrogance of ignorance, and the confusion of delusion ~ all too evident in cosmic childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, respectively ~ lead, eventually, to the wisdom to negotiate and navigate all manner of nescience, ignorance, and delusion.
We already know what it means to be truthful or helpful, to be reasonable or sensible. In any given situation or interaction, we already know how hard or easy it can be to pinpoint the most reasonable, relevant information and to pinpoint the most sensible, salient inspiration.
We already know what it means to say “this is true, and this is true for me.” That is, we already know what it means to say “this is true for my life, and this is true for me, for my story,” but what kind of story could be authored that would move us with ease through willful immaturity?
More to the point, what kind of character would be required of such an author?
What kind of story would clear the conscience, would make for a clear conscience, would keep the conscience clear, with all due respect given to the innocence of nescience, without falling prey to the willful immaturity of ignorance and delusion under the weight of arrogance?
I wonder: what kind of story for my life would serve me best, in this space, at this time, for this world, as a container for my life, as a bridge between my life and my story, as a mirror for the story of my life? Would such a focus not bring extraordinary clarity and harmony?
‘Tis a Weird, Wild, Worried World
By many accounts, we come into a cold world, naked and all alone. Oddly, it is said that we choose, as souls in a realm of spirit, much about who and what we are even before the push through yet another birth canal into yet another strange and (at first) inhospitable world.
Regardless of whether or not the birth is smooth and gentle, this trauma of separation remains, and compounds lifetime after lifetime, one incarnation after another. Let us rightly suppose that each and every soul incarnated suffers, to one degree or another, from PTSD.
We are sensitive creatures, some more than others. We remain prone to fear and doubt, anger and regret, some of it conscious, much of it unconscious. We are capable of acts that would make a vicious animal blush, even as we remain capable of feats that defy simple logic.
From the perspective of a cosmic observer, we are no doubt a strange species, a wounded species, a remarkable species, and yet, we have many stories to tell each other, some of them sacred, some of them divine, but many of them as mundane as changing a baby’s diaper.
The default moral setting for humanity, with its checkered background through millennia of living, loving, learning, and laughing, is to conform, conform, conform; to enslave and be enslaved by means both subtle and obvious; to build pressure cookers to keep each other in check.
It has always been this way ~ perhaps indelibly imprinted into the soul of humanity.
In this world at this time, the pressure is building to find balance, not only between health and wealth, but between health and health, all the while grappling with the hidden repercussions of collective abuse and neglect, which are only now coming up and out into plain view.
In this world at this time, the pressure to conform under a hidden, cowardly controlling hand of censorship is quite severe. The global body politic is fractured, fracturing along many lines. We are hard pressed to stand up and stand out. Our stories are crimped and cramped.
The incentive to give flesh and bone to “I live and love the story of my life” is most evident in adolescence, where all manner of ignorance is given free reign, compelled to savage the innocence of nescience in a bid to find a wholesome balance between maturity and immaturity.
Some of us succeed in this age-old endeavor; many do not, having succumbed to the relentless pressure of conformity, resulting eventually in either an abundance of caution or a poverty of despair, all the while grappling with the malignant persecutions of narcissistic endeavor.
Surely there’s more to life than living inside a comfortable albeit battered matchbox.
I Like and I Love Who I Am in My Story
I like and I love who I am in my story: who among us can make such a bold claim? Perhaps those who remain too busy living and loving their lives to the fullest to write or tell their stories. And so, more modestly stated, who among us can endeavor to make such a bold claim?
The answer might surprise you: those who embody sovereignty with due respect given to those who do likewise. If we each made of point of living and loving the stories of our lives, would we not be duly compelled to address and resolve who we are in relation to our stories?
As sovereign creators, living and loving the stories of our lives, would we not be compelled to stand up and stand out in our own way, at our own pace, at the right time, in the right place, while finding it within ourselves to lend a hand to those who yearn to do and be likewise?
Personal confession: I tend to like and love who I am in my story because I start with soul and spirit, at rest or in flow, being and becoming, sacred and divine, through inquiry and discovery, with grace and ease, all for the sake of contentment and enchantment ~ respectively.
In soul and spirit, with contentment and enchantment, I come alive to be alive.
That is, I care enough to trust myself, even as I trust myself enough to care.
In posts to come, I shall explore the intersection between life and story.