It's all a story

In my frantic life, I rush to and fro. This demand and that demand always. . .rarely looking much beyond today, seldom beyond tomorrow, never past next week. Into this flurry, Brian says, "I want to meet with you each week."

"Sure," says I. After all, there comes a point where one more thing to do is just one more thing to do. There comes a point where I gave up hope of getting unburied and just kept shoveling. The beauty of my job, however, is that there is a point where it all goes away. There is a point at the end of the semester where I can take a breath, relax, and retool for the next semester. All is not lost; there is light up ahead.

So I meet with Brian. I have now met with him twice. Each time, I rush into his office as a man who has places to go and people to see. I enter as a busy person with an attitude of "this had better be important." It is.

Brian invites me to sit, so I sit. Brian asks me about my week, so I tell him. Brian asks me to think about more than today, tomorrow, or next week, so I talk about more than today, tomorrow, or next week. For that hour, Brian starts to lift me out of the minutiae of everyday life, and gives me an hour to think about something more than just this instant, just this day.

So, yesterday, Brian is excited about this new DVD called, Epic. This morning, I go and view the DVD, which features John Eldredge. Eldredge discusses the importance of story. This is nothing new. In fact, Lyotard stated much the same in The Postmodern Condition. We understand the world around us through story. In fact, Lyotard goes so far to say that knowledge has to be expressed in narrative before we do understand it.

Eldredge then goes on to say that stories reflect one another. That is, there are common elements between stories. Again, nothing really new. Northrup Frye stated much the same thing when he was discussing archetypes. Joseph Campbell said much the same in his study of myth.

Where this gets interesting is when Eldredge states that the stories we tell reflect a bigger story, a story of which we are all apart. I'm reminded of a story by Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony. In Ceremony, Tayo is a half-breed, Native American who returns home after WWII. He feels disconnected and lost. At one point, he feels that he is disappearing and invisible. His illness continues until he discovers his role in a bigger tale. I think this is true of all of us. We are all in a bigger tale. In order to get over our illness, we need to look beyond the I and Me of today and to see ourselves as part of something larger. It is only when we see ourselves as something larger that life starts to having meaning and purpose.