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By Michael Hardy
August 7, 2011
Some of you probably recognized the music Denise played just now.
It's the theme to the British science fiction show Doctor Who.
Anybody here a fan?
All you need to know for our purpose here is that the principal
character, the Doctor, is a super-intelligent alien with a machine
that lets him travel anywhere in time and space. With his home
planet gone, he is always traveling the universe, usually with human
companions.
The show started in 1963 and ran until the late 1980s, and then was
revived in 2005.
In the 2010 season, the storyline involved a disruption in time that
was on the verge of causing the entire universe to not exist. And
not only would it not exist, it would be swallowed into time and
never have existed at all.
The Doctor eventually figures out a solution, but it will mean that
in order to save the universe, he will have to let himself be erased
– to never have existed.
He puts the plan into motion and as it begins to take effect, time
starts to rewind for him and he finds himself at the bedside of his
current traveling companion, Amelia – but about 15 years in the past
when she is just a little girl.
Here's the reason I bring it up. As he sits beside her while she
sleeps, he says these words:
“When you wake up … you won't even remember me. Well, you'll
remember me a little. I'll be a story in your head. But that's okay.
We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because
it was, you know. It was the best.”
We're all stories, in the end.
In this fantasy story, the Doctor's real life with Amy will become
just a half-remembered childhood tale. And isn't he right? We are
all stories in the end.
When we pass from the world, those who knew us will tell stories
about us from their memories. To those who remember us, the stories
will bring vivid recollections. But to those who never knew us,
we'll never be more than characters in a story.
And in another generation, no one alive will have known us.
We're all stories in the end.
There's a lesson in that. If we're all stories in the end, we're all
stories in the now. The story doesn't begin only after our lives are
done. We're living our stories now, day by day, hour by hour.
A choice we make today, even a seemingly trivial one, can
reverberate into the future, shaping some part of our lives a week
from now, or next year.
Once we grasp that – when we can see ourselves as each the
protagonist of a novel – we can become the author as well. We can
live a story, to some extent shaped by other people and
circumstances, but to a large degree within our control.
So how do we do that? How do we take our lives and see them as
stories? How do we see ourselves as telling a story, rather than
being carried along by the stories going on around us?
The first step is simply believing that we can.
Your life is a first-person novel; you are both the protagonist and
the author. As protagonist, you interact with all the other
characters in your novel. Some are significant supporting
characters, some are occasional bit players, but they all can steer
our course in big and small ways.
So can events, things that happen unexpectedly that we must deal
with.
We begin to write our stories, rather than coast through them, when
we make choices that may change our course.
Often, the choices we make aren't surprising, although they do set a
direction. Sometimes, we do something nobody expected, that even we
weren't sure we would do. Whether the choices are big or small, we
take up the pen when we choose a direction.
But can we really do this? Can we make true choices or are we
prisoners of our genes? Are we limited by our circumstances? Is our
free will only an illusion?
In fact, there are some limits on our choices, but they're not set
in stone.
In fiction, good characters are defined well so that who they are
limits what they are likely to do, limits that grow naturally from
the character's beliefs, ethics, desires and weaknesses. When a
character we've become familiar with does something unexpected
that's not well explained as part of the story, our suspension of
disbelief snaps because we know it's out-of-character behavior.
Can you imagine James Bond running away in panic when the villain's
henchmen shoot at him? Would Michael Douglas's Gordon Gekko from the
“Wall Street” movies give all his money to charity without an
ulterior motive?
Can you imagine Star Trek's Mr. Spock cracking jokes and flirting
with the women on the Enterprise if he wasn't under the influence of
some force that broke his devotion to unemotional logic?
When these things happen in fiction, we in the audience reject it
because it's out of character. The only way it could be even
possibly acceptable is if the behavior represents a real change of
heart for the character and becomes part of the story.
And there's the limitation on the stories of our lives: we rarely
behave out of character.
Theoretically, turning tail and running from danger is an option
James Bond could choose, but because of who he is, fundamentally, he
never would.
But in real life, as in fiction, there is a time for
out-of-character behavior.
In fiction, it signifies an author wanting to make a serious change
to a character's nature, and will influence all future stories about
that character. It has the same significance in real life.
Our choices become habits, habits become patterns and patterns
become character.
For example, imagine that someone insults you at a party. In theory,
you have any of a large number of reactions to choose from.
You can ignore it. You can walk away from the person. You can insult
the person back. You can slap her. You can pretend to ignore it and
then go outside and slash her tires. And so on.
But in reality, you have a narrower range of choices, and those
we're most likely to take are influenced by our inborn
personalities, the ways we've reacted to insult in the past, our
relationship to the person who insulted us and even our mood of the
moment.
Like the prospect of James Bond panicking rather than maintaining
his calm demeanor, there are some reactions that are viable options
in the abstract but not options we would ever take – at least not
without awareness of the factors that influence us and a deliberate
decision to defy them.
Whatever way we choose to react, that reaction will add to the
patterns already in place. That will influence our actions in the
future.
It also will add to the patterns affecting the person who insulted
us (just as her insult added a new pattern to our own.)
And that's where out of character behavior comes in.
When someone who is easily angered chooses to learn deep-breathing
calming exercises to help control the anger, he's changing his own
story.
In the past it would have been in character for him to respond to
bad service in a restaurant by yelling at the server. But after he
takes up the pen and writes a new aspect to his character, he’s more
likely to patiently request another cup of coffee twice rather than
grow angry when the first request goes unmet for ten minutes.
From then on, he's telling a new story with his life, and affecting
the other characters in his novel in different ways, a change that
ripples out to the characters in the novels that star those other
characters.
Those other people.
That's the other dimension here. Our stories are not limited to
ourselves.
They begin before we are born, with our parents. With their parents.
And so on back.
We exist, and live the lives we do, because of thousands, tens of
thousands of small decisions that people made before we were even
here, and that we, and others, have made since then.
This is a concept that you find strongly in some neo-pagan
traditions. In Asatru, a pagan religion drawn from Scandanavian
lore, it’s called wyrd. W-y-r-d.
It simply means that who we are is shaped by who our ancestors were,
and that wat we do, our decisions, continue to shape us, and
ultimately our children and grandchildren.
It’s something similar to, but not quite the same as, the concept of
karma.
It reminds us that causes of our decisions don’t start with us, and
the effects of our decisions don’t stop with us. Our decisions
affect those around us.
They affect our children, grandchildren and, as we affect them, they
make choices influenced in part by us that will affect their own
children.
Those of you who were here for Bruce's Question Box sermon last week
may recall what he said about his influences. He told us of his
grandfather, who left Germany with his wife and daughter just before
World War II.
He came to the midwest of America, and eventually became an
enthusiastic Unitarian. Because of that one decision, and the
decisions that flowed from it, Bruce's mother found a husband in the
heart of America, and raised her children as UUs.
They might have been German Lutherans instead, but one man’s
decision to flee his homeland changed all that. And all of it shaped
Bruce's early life and led to his becoming a UU minister.
That's storytelling.
Bruce's grandfather is, to us, a story. We're all stories, in the
end. But that story shaped Bruce's story in profound ways. Our
stories are driven by an interwoven thread that binds together what
has been, what is becoming and what will be.
So how does this help us live a better story?
Recognize, when you have moments of choice in your life, that your
first inclinations are going to be strongly affected by your past,
by the accumulation of choices and habits little by little. Your
natural impulse may be a good choice for your story but if it's not,
you have the power – with courage – to make another choice.
Here's another example: Donald Miller, a Christian essayist, wrote a
memoir called Blue Like Jazz, and later, some independent
film-makers decided to make a movie of it. But first they had to
turn Miller's rambling memories into a tight, coherent plot suitable
for film.
Miller wrote another book about the experience of editing his life,
called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. In it, he tells about
attending a seminar on storytelling taught by a writer named Robert
McKee. And soon after that, he visits a friend whose daughter is
dating someone the father doesn't like or trust. Miller goes on:
Then I said something that caught his attention. I said his daughter
was living a terrible story.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
To be honest, I don't know exactly what I meant. I probably wouldn't
have said it if I hadn't just returned from the McKee seminar.
But I told him what I'd learned, that the elements of a story
involve a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to
get it. Even as I said this, I wasn't sure how it applied to his
daughter.
“Go on,” my friend said.
“I don't know, exactly, but she's not living a very good story.
She's caught up in a bad one.”
Miller and his friend talked a while longer, about novels and movies
and what makes for a good story, and the visit ended. But, he
writes:
A couple of months later I ran into Jason and asked about his
daughter.
“She's better,” he said to me, smiling. And when I asked why, he
told me his family was living a better story.
The better story in this case was a radical one.
Miller's friend had thought about the conversation and decided to
take deliberate steps to improve the story his family was living. He
hooked up with an organization that builds orphanages in third-world
countries and committed the family to build one in Mexico, at a cost
of about $25,000 they didn't have.
Most of us would not consider such a step. I wouldn't. But you have
to admit, that's a hell of a story.
It's when we make those pivotal choices in recognition that we need
not be limited by the choices we've made before that our lives can
turn dramatically.
Donald Miller's friend and Bruce's grandfather are examples of
people who made profound changes to radically alter their stories.
But it doesn't have to be a big and dramatic shift. You don't have
to abandon your life and go build an orphanage to live a better
story. You don't have to flee your homeland and start a new life in
a new place.
Often we change our patterns, our habits, just a little, in a way
that will be in play as the threads of our lives continue to weave
together. But that small course correction, almost imperceptible at
the time, can eventually lead us to a place miles and miles from
where we would have been had we not made it.
Another key ingredient it living a better story is clarity of
ambition.
Remember what Donald Miller learned in the story seminar: a story is
about a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get
it.
Clear desires make for strong stories. Muddled, ambivalent lives
make for muddled, ambivalent stories.
In any compelling drama, you should be able to point to any major
character and be able to say, succinctly, what the person wants in
that moment in the story.
Think of a film you've seen or a novel you've read that had a
lasting impact on you, and it's likely that part of the reason is
because it was clear what the main characters wanted.
Think of a story that seemed uninvolving or left you feeling
unsatisfied, and it may be because the characters lacked direction –
we don't understand why they do what they do, because a poor
storyteller doesn't know just what it is they're trying to achieve.
A clear objective gives the character a path to travel, engaging the
obstacles along the way. Often those obstacles come from other
characters, living their own stories. Sometimes they come from
within, weaknesses in our characters or simple mistakes in our
perceptions that we must overcome.
Living your life as a story isn't necessarily easy, but it's a way
of thinking about life that can open new doors for us.
In the Doctor Who episode that we started with, Amy and her fiance
Rory remember the Doctor just as a story, as he said they would,
until the vividness of the story starts to feel real in their minds
and he's able to return to existence.
It's a metaphor of course, and it's a powerful one: Stories matter.
Compelling lives make for compelling stories.
Compelling stories can have a power that lives on after the person
at the center of them is a memory.
We have the power to write our stories as we go and, if the need
arises, to deliberately choose to live a better one.
We're all stories in the end. We're all stories in the now.
Make yours a good one.
Make it the best.
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