Stories of our life define us. They tell us who we are, or aren't. They are like boundaries and borders within the parameters of which we are able to excercise the choices of actions, thoughts, and being of what we want to be.
The obvious response to this would be that I don't have a story, my life is very routine and mundane like an ordinary person's for when we think of 'stories' it brings to mind fairies and demons, prince and princesses, magic and surrealism, fantasy mixed with dreams, drama and tragedy. Stories mean tales of faraway lands, both in terms of time and distance, they are meant to be 'other' than what 'is' and are there to provide us with an escape from our everyday surroundings. They are or rather come to mean transporters to otherness and other ways of being. In all ages people have relied upon stories to weave a narrative, to tell of things that are significant and things that truly matter to us at a human level such as love and compassion, forgivness, empathy, charity and humility. The myths of the past civilizations are stories that come up again and again not as true historical events that occured at a fixed time and place, but as interpretations of what humans are capable of doing and not doing depending on the circumstances.
Take the story of Oedipus, the Thebean king who married his mother and killed his own father, for he could not decipher the truth of his own birth. He is blind in mind and reason, and eventually gouges out his eyes when he comes to know the truth. Hamlet is mad not because he can't reason, but because he cannot act on his reason for he doubts and doubts, and remains in an utter state of uncertainty, and eventually becomes the instrument of his own fall. The three Magi, the biblical kings, who travelled from the East on the birth of baby Jesus with gifts to commemorate the birth, for it is significant not only for people of Bethlehem, but the whole humanity; the story is rendering much more than what is stated. The journey, the guiding star, the gifts - all are symbolic of the importance of the event, the magnanimity of it, the world wide effect of it.
What does all of the above have to do with our day to day lives where no drama takes place other than the inane ones on TV, the contionous squabbling of the so-called politicos of our land that leads to nothing whatsoever, the daily struggle to survive, the absence of true love, and the sheer non-existence of excitment, joy and bliss that comes with hope of better things to come. How in such circumstances do we spin our own individual yarns? and even if we do pen them down how do they make an impact, or reveal more than what is stated. They tell us nothing new, nothing inspirational, and nothing exciting.
I believe this is because we have stopped living the stories that we are capable of living. we have limited ourselves into short-sighted, xenophobic, paranoid and neurotic individuals who have gradually lost their ability to fantasize and dream. I am not propounding that we all should spend time day dreaming and thus whip out a fantatsical tale, no, not at all. What I am saying is perhaps we need to re-tell our stories, re-think our own being, re-assess and re-examine who we are? what are we doing? and why? We must dispell the way we think and believe. We must suspend judgment, get off from our high horse and question our most cherished truths or truths we think are true.
The violence and hatred around us, the polarity between people of the same land, the disregard for others, the maliciousness towards all who are different; these beliefs have to be redefined, and a new story or a new narrative of how we are to be has to be created. This new way of being has to eventually come from each one of us within our our own limited, monotonous and mundane lives ( our own boundaries).... only then can we re-write our stories and the same stories can then turn into legends, epics and myths that make us eternal and human at all levels, and at all times and at hopefully beyond time.
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