Stepping Out from the "Story of My Life"

 For most of us, “The Story of My Life” is the object of our greatest fascination, our singular occupation, our greatest love.  Nearly every waking moment of every day is considered and even urgently interpreted from a personal perspective.  “Meaning” (relevance to the Story) is sought or projected onto events and objects with evermore experienced and clever insight as we age - until an advanced age may arrive that diminishes that ability.  Until that time comes, why should one be concerned with 'Stepping Out' from the "Story of My Life"?

Each thing within the Story is either attractive or repulsive, by degrees.  There are qualities of both feelings in each thing, and so the opposite labels can be paired into one concept of motion; dynamic force (vs. static, or without movement).  If the degree of attraction/repulsion for a Story element is strong, it is held close to the center of focus in the Story.  In the degree is weak, it may drift toward the periphery, or be edited out of the Story all together.

{If a tone is not in harmony with others, it doesn’t matter if it is sharp or flat, it only matters that it is not harmonic.  Degrees of dissonance are variations in movement from the fixed point of harmony.}

The same bonds of attraction and repulsion between the self and the Story elements also bind the self to Time and Place with the same insistent, firm hold.  Time and Place (Einstein’s term: space/time) is the cherished, but largely unexamined, matrix on which the Story unfolds.  It is the stage booked for the ongoing Story performance, and because the stage affects the performance, it (time/space) is also a Story element. (An interest point of debate is whether there can actually be a 'stage' apart from the 'Story', that it may be only a 'Story element' and couldn't exist otherwise.)

The way to step out or set aside “The Story of My Life” is a matter that is pointed to by the question of why is it a good thing to be able to do.  Why is it good to broaden the personal perspective and strive to gain empathy?  What relevance do broader vantage points have when one still has to live life in a personal way?  There's only one stage that matters, and it certainly seems that there is actually only one Story performance happening, and its title is "My Life".  A good playwright allows for intermissions for theatre goers to take a break and perhaps mingle in the lobby.  Doesn't that make the performance a richer audience experience?

Throughout our brief history, numerous key sources of wisdom have indicated that the fundamental purpose of life is to develop the ability to know love, in its myriad forms, and to hold onto and be held by some of those forms.  Eventually, if we aim for it, we may learn how to let go of it in its unified, formlessness.  

A developed loving (empathic) response is to look on life with eyes of compassion, for all of the manifestations of life, whether they are commonly labeled good or bad.  It is to listen for the harmonics which abound in the world.  It is to realize one has a harmonic point to occupy.

Our thoughts move around in our imaginative minds in packages we call concepts.  Concepts are Story elements.  We categorize and arrange them, and rearrange them all the time like tireless interior decorators, or shipping clerks, scurrying about in the cranial living/work space.  The mind is a bustling place made busy by dynamics of dissonance, unceasing movement. 

Contemplation of love, apart from its personal Story relevance, is one way to take a break from the exhausting task of managing the countless thought packages, of performing on stage, of creating and living in the Story.  It’s good to step out and take work breaks as often as the boss will let you.   Concepts demand our attention for maintenance.  Percepts - that which we can know apart from thinking - deserve our attention for the awe they inspire.

Unfiltered perception is another way to set aside the Story of My Life.  These are breaks, or treats we give ourselves and they can become habit-forming.  Earlier, it was implied that advanced age may diminish our ability to find meaning, or make sense of things, but it may rather be simply that we have “Story fatigue”.  We enjoy more and more the developing ability to perceive without the effort of conceiving personal meaning.  Do we lose our abilities for reaction and motion, or do we gain true stillness in the mind and body?  

Sometimes we sense in very old people that there's "nobody home", as if they were on extended holiday, and there may not be a forwarding address.  In our later years, we see the work is done - futile as it was - and we’re ready to give it a rest, and only in that state of stillness may we enjoy the fruit of our labor.

By perceiving the world, as it is, with compassion and in stillness, we can enjoy it along the way and don’t have to wait until we are eventually worn out from our lifelong careers of conceptual work.  

The stage curtain will finally descend and the Story will be over for each of us, but until then, the ongoing performance of the Story of My Life will play out much better with intermissions.