What’s Your Story?

One Day, My Story Just Disappeared

Life is a curious affair with destiny. I’m not sure what your story is but mine seemed so certain for so many years until it was not. I’ve had my moments of glory and my outs. You might say I’m a slow learner, or stubborn, or hardheaded, or determined, or strong willed, but it has finally come down to a simple and loving perception that life flows through me; it’s not me moving through life.

The Grand Illusion

Everything I have fashioned in my mind is most likely one grand illusion like I’m the master of my destiny. I may be a master navigator but there’s a life force greater than my will that flows through all the events in my life. I know this is not what many of us believe, have been taught, and act out in the wild west of American life and elsewhere. But, I’ve come around to wrestling with this twist of perception.

Control is a Mental Fig-Newton

It goes beyond the story of egoic construction and fabrication and defense of what and why we do, what we do and don’t do. It’s a surrendering to a world where my world is not safe. I am not in control. My power over events in my life are minimal if at all. What I believed to be a life of daring, and creative pursuits has vaporized like a cloud drifting into the night. It’s hard to admit that my former, and still portions of my current life, are just a myth.

A Life Force Moves through Us

I bought into the illusion of control as it was presented and demonstrated by my parents and the world around me. I bought into the world of control in order to comfort the fears that welled up from past experiences; mine and others. And I have to admit that this illusion seemed to be the motivating force for me to get up off the floor of life after being fired not once but many times, a divorce that I initiated, and numerous attempts to find purpose in a life that seemed to be totally adrift. Yet, I now believe there is a greater life force that moves through us, our life, and our celebrations of what is.

Stories and More Stories

I can’t prove this theory but I’m beginning to explore it with the fascination of a child running his first bright red crayon across a blank white wall. The possibilities are unlimited. And as I do, I begin to wonder and listen to all the other stories people have about every aspect of their life, loves, family, career, retirement, spiritual endeavors, and the significance of it all as we all approach that final destination.

Power, Money, and Material Possessions

And what I’m hearing are amazing stories framed in many dimensions of this and that; of triumph, of defeat, of near misses, complete restarts, and miracles that can’t be explained within the context of determining our own destiny. Later in life, the story is told in the past tense. It’s already happened. Yet there is an underlying current that has provided a perspective of how life happens as we supposedly achieved mastery through our own control that resulted in acuminating power, money, material possessions, and the like.

Now, I’m not opposed to any of those results, just curious as my perception of how all of my life continues to unfold and shift. And what I’m liking is the perception that we are free to dream, free to create, and participate fully in our own being in making this a better place to live in community.

Learning to Flow

Perhaps it wasn’t all my “efforting” to control the varied influences upon my life that made a significant difference despite what I believed.

Perhaps there is a higher force that provided many lessons along the way for me to learn how to flow with this river of life with more joy and purpose than living the illusion of my past stories.

“Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.” Rumi