You are a story.
The truth of it is not just one story, but an uncountable number of accounts forged into one. We call these experiences, but in separating out our experiences, we must not lose the greater narrative. You are a story because anything with characters, setting, and plot is, in fact, a story.
To miss the storiedness of our life is to lose the opportunity to live from and offer the heart where the story itself resides.
Your life has characters. There’s you. And then the host of others who inhabit your tale, welcomed or not.
There is a setting. You were born somewhere. Downtown San Diego on one of those 75 degree days. A little town in Iowa, perhaps. Or a suburb west of Boston on a cool September day when the Red Sox lost. Maybe you love or hate the setting of your tale. Wherever you are and however much you like it, you walk and breathe and love and hope somewhere.
And there is plot. If your story is as good as the popcorn and butter at the movies, it has two main ingredients: Your desire and that which opposes it. Like it or not, conflict becomes a necessity for a good story. We do not talk about the days Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. We talk about the day he fell off. Without tension, a story loses our interest.
So we must embrace tension, for this is where good stories begin. Tension can be whittled down to a few serious questions: Where have you been? Where are you going? And why? Here resides the heart of your story.
Where have you been? That scar on your forehead just below your hairline. What happened? The picture on your desk of your family at the beach. Everyone is smiling except the child in the middle. Why the frown? Then there is the way you flinch when someone looks absent and reserved, similar to the gaze your father owned before he walked out. Thank God for the Art teacher who noticed your talent and even more so your passion and heart underneath.
Where are you going? This is your fuel tank. When you step out of bed in the morning, some force pushes your feet to the cold floor. Desire and longing become our compass. In ten years, I want to be…where? Or, more importantly, who? What dreams have been born out of shattered ones? What do you envision different about the world because you lived? What stories do you want told at your funeral? Who is it you would like to be there?
And Why? The question of “why” bridges the gap between the completed chapters and those left unwritten. The power of your story is found in your why. Why transforms a spouse on the brink of divorce to one who contends for the marriage. Why moves an addict away from the bottle even when it promises an end to loneliness. Why keeps the creative heart engaged when rejection seems inevitable. Why moves us to seek hope in the midst of despair and to believe there’s still purpose worth fighting for. To know our why hinges on a very story-like question: What kind of character do I want to be?
You are a story, one worth knowing. Whether you believe you are worth knowing becomes the key that unlocks, opens, and invites you to the depths of your narrative.
