We humans are natural story-tellers. Being a highly social species, we love to tell other people tales about how our life came to be what it is, and usually those stories find a receptive audience.
Everybody likes a good story. But I've been thinking about a fatal flaw that strikes at the heart of many stories: though they often, if not usually, feature some special event that was, if not exceedingly unlikely, at least out of the ordinary, a more detached perspective calls such specialness into question.
This gets at our tendency to put ourselves at the center of our narratives. Even if we don't consciously believe that we're someone special, the way we frame stories about our life often screams, albeit wordlessly, Hey, look at amazing me! Can you believe how this happened?
Here's some examples from my own life. These are stories that I've told many times. I've enjoyed telling them because it seemed like they pointed, if not to fate or destiny, at least to an unlikely occurrence that ended up having major consequences.
I've shared these stories in blog posts, so I'll copy them in from previous tellings.
I graduated with a useless BA in psychology and was contemplating applying for an appropriately menial job. Then I overheard a conversation in the San Jose State cafeteria.
"Man, I can't do anything with a psych degree. And it takes at least three years to get a Ph.D." His friend replied, "You should get a M.S.W. It's just two years, and there are good jobs available after you graduate."
I had no idea what a M.S.W. was. I went to the library and looked it up. Everyone was talking about beautiful green Oregon, so I applied to the only school of social work in the state. Was admitted. Thirty-six years later, I'm still here.
A brief overheard conversation. My life heads off in a new direction. Go figure. I sure can't.
How I got initiated by an Indian guru. (This is just the beginning of the story.)
San Jose State College, south of San Francisco. 1969. Flower power era, but on the declining crest of hippie-dom. I was heavy into marijuana, psychedelics, reading Zen, and shunning anything remotely religious.
One day I was walking across campus and saw a guy standing on his head. Some other Yoga devotees were with him.
That was who I later came to call "Yogiraj." I won't share his real name -- no reason to. He was an intense Greek in his early 30s or thereabouts who drove around San Jose in a VW bus with "Christananda Ashram" and the Sanskrit Om symbol emblazoned on the side.
Before too long my girlfriend, Sue (whom I later married), and I were riding around in the VW. Curious about Yoga, the on-campus demonstration led me to pick up a flyer.
Sue and I started taking classes in hatha yoga and meditation. The "ashram" was in Yogiraj's home. He was married to a younger American girl. His mother lived with them. She'd make terrific baklava and other Greek goodies.
I became one of Yogiraj's lead students. And definitely acted the part.
Some sixteen years ago Laurel placed a personals ad in Willamette Week. This was in the ancient pre-online days, so I read about this 40 y.o. aware, fit, well-educated, independent, successful, attractive, blonde, long-haired SWF as I was thumbing through a Willamette Week copy that I had picked up at the state Capitol. This enticing and absolutely accurate description got me to write a letter to Box 601 that evening.
As of today we’ve been married fifteen years. Thank you, Willamette Week. By the way, karmically speaking it was interesting that a personals ad in a Portland publication brought together a Salem man and a woman who lived fairly close, outside of Silverton. Even more (play Twilight Zone music in your head now), we both were Isuzu Trooper owners!
What dawned on me a few days ago -- and I admit that it's sort of crazy it took me so long to realize this -- is that if I hadn't overheard the conversation in the San Jose State cafeteria, or walked by a Greek yoga teacher standing on his head, or picked up a copy of Portland's alternative newspaper before I attended a hearing at the Oregon capitol, my life would have headed off in different directions, and those directions probably would have struck me as equally unlikely.
Meaning, I wouldn't have gotten a Master's Degree in Social Work after graduating from college, but something would have impelled me to pursue a different career; I wouldn't have gotten initiated into an Eastern philosophy called Radha Soami Satsang Beas, but I would have embraced some other approach to finding deeper meaning in my life; I wouldn't have married Laurel Rhoades as my second wife, but I would have married someone else.
My stories would be different. Yet I'd delight in telling them, because how I ended up with a certain career, spiritual path, or wife would seem just as unlikely as my current stories about how my life turned out.
In other words, life seems miraculous, as if things were "meant to be," only when we look upon our life backwards, in retrospect. Then we can pick out certain vignettes to include in the stories we tell other people about how freaking amazing it was that this or that happened the way it did.
We forget that if instead of this or that, what occurred was such and such, that such and such would be just as improbable in our telling. The simple truth is this: the course of our life only takes a single direction, and what caused us to take that direction never can be completely understood, because the influences that act upon us are so many and varied.
It feels good to write our own screenplay, choosing certain episodes that make a good story when told to others, but like all screenplays, this is fictional.
Recent Comments