Marching Through Our Stories

It may sound obvious at first, but each of us is meant to lead our own lives.  We go about "earning a living" through paid employment (perhaps self-employed), living "off the system" through welfare/disability programs or the (in)justice system, or living "off the grid" either by our own choice or through circumstance.  Those are not the only possibilities, but they are the most commonly discussed ones.  There are an infinite number of paths to choose in life, but we tend to feel as though one particular path--usually the one we each are on ourselves--is the correct one and that others ought to follow a similar path.  Life is like a mob of people marching forward:  some march along side us, others  are pulled behind us by unseen forces ("government handouts"), some might march against us (naysayers, regulators, IRS, law enforcement, battles/war, etc.).  But all of these people are not marching only forward in a straight line with some people and against others.  We are like the molecules and forces of the earth, air, fire and water moving together in multiple dimensions simultaneously battling each other and working together to keep the "machine" of life going.  And the machine is not made up of human beings alone but all of life, matter, and forces of energy.

Each one of our lives is a story, and each story has a set of information about it.  We like to believe that we know and understand our own stories but we often do not.  Though we do not fully understand or know our own stories (what happens on the next page or in the next chapter?) we keep writing them.  As we write our own stories we read bits and pieces of others' stories and go back and read bits of our own story.  When we compare our story to others' stories we judge both their stories and our own.  If we relate to parts of others' stories and accept those parts we cannot relate to, we are growing rather than judging.  If we get stuck reading and rereading our own and/or others' stories and stop writing our own, we can fall deep into depression and either continue by writing an incredibly dark and twisted story or very literally end our story through suicide.  The same could be said if we're constantly worrying about the next page or the next chapter of our stories.  We need to keep growing and writing our own stories.

So are we marching or writing stories?  We are marching through our own stories in an infinite library and the books are not bound or laying still on shelves stacked neatly next to one another for all eternity.  Our stories are shared and the characters and events occur in different stories at different times.  What if we slowed from a march to a stroll at a varied pace and stopped to rest once in a while and really appreciate the stories?  Our stories are woven together in the fabric of time but like all things the fabric degrades and is recycled over and over again.  We are mortal beings and we stop marching or strolling at some point, but our stories live on.

Recently a very well known and much beloved celebrity passed away.  He was a troubled soul, but he was deeply admired and his body of work was vast and varied.  Many on social media and in real life expressed sadness and condolences of his passing and shared images, words, and clips of performances in his honor.  Others were saddened by his passing but kept their focus on other events still taking place today.  There are wars and conflicts and suppression and oppression of people and ideas.  Horrible things happen every day and people focus on the death of one man and the work that he did during his lifetime?  What about all the children being killed and abused the world over whose chance at a free and happy life are cut short?  What about those poor, innocent children who have no choice in what happens to them?

Some denounce those who mourn a celebrity one did not know personally and not mourning young victims halfway around the world whom one not only never met but whom one never even knew existed.  What good is simply pointing out perceived shortcomings of people?  Perhaps we ought to ask the following question:  Why do people so openly express their feelings about the life and death of famous people and so rarely express feelings about the life and death of the voiceless and downtrodden?  I believe that it boils down to the fact that celebrities are looked upon as luminaries--exceptional and inspirational people who affect us personally, sometimes in profound ways.  We feel connected to celebrities even when we never have met them.  We often feel as though they are part of the family or we aspire to be like them.  Generally that is not true of random emaciated children in foreign countries thousands of miles away.  They are not family members, nor do they have an immediate effect on us or our family.  Maybe we simply do not want to believe that they have an effect on us or that we have an effect on them.  It is too difficult--to painful--to fathom that we are in any way responsible for their suffering or that their suffering might be a result of our comfort.  Modern electronics, jewelry, and countless other goods we buy every day contain materials that once passed through the hands of the poor and disenfranchised.  The people that assembled our smart phones may be going to bed hungry or contemplating suicide not simply because of depression but because their lives are like that of a caged animal with no room to move or breathe.

Death and suffering are incredibly tragic things.  But why might they be considered more tragic under one circumstance and less tragic under others?  It depends on our level of attachment to those who suffer and/or pass on.  When most people die it is an arduous loss to somebody in some way.  Everybody is (or was) someone's child, whether one or both (or perhaps several) parents/guardians survive them or not.  For the spiritually inclined every person is at the very least a son or daughter of God (or whatever name[s] one may choose).  Though we cannot easily trace it back to ourselves, everyone affects everything and everybody else somehow--no matter how insignificant the effect might seem.  But that goes both ways--they affect us and we affect them.  We all are characters in each others' stories moving along in an eternal cosmic dance of which we are capable of seeing only an infinitesimal part.

To live a more fulfilling life and to make our stories infinitely more compelling we ought to recognize others' stories as no more or less important than our own.  After all, what is it that we are actually doing?  Are we marching through our own story alone straight to a definitive end or are we strolling through each others' stories--weaving in and out---and leaving traces everywhere even after our own story ends?  It is possible that once this story ends we can start another story, but that's a discussion for another time.