Oh the stories!
Much of our lives are about stories. We are born into the world of tales of princesses atop of peas and oatmeal being too hot, too cold or just right. Our little hearts demand just one story more, pleading with our parents to keep us entertained for a moment longer. Anything to keep us from the dreaded seal of the door closing and leaving us to the tales we create about the devious monsters that are ready to spring up from under our beds and lurk snakily out from the closet to devour us in cold blood and leave just a pair of shredded pajamas behind. Our little ghostly bodies would look on at our beloved parents from the afterlife and cry out to our them that had they taken the time to read just one more story, perhaps that would have been the protective amulet to keep us from being eviscerated.
Fast forward to stories beyond the kindergarden set. Fueled by hormones and insecurity (at least in my case anyways), I was consumed by the superstars of the day and contented myself to pour over music magazines, imagining what their fabulous lives were like and obsessed with the long hair metal dudes in my school that smoked, rode dirt bikes and were generally bad news. One named Sam had been run over jumping train tracks and had part of his foot cut off, leaving him with a limp. This was a story that only made him more irresponsibly awesome and gnarly. Stories whirled around high school of those kids who would sneak alcohol into school dances and who you’d later align yourself with as they either had the best stories or helped create new and more sinister ones. Small towns can be dangerous for kids with a lot of time on their hands, much beyond just losing a little bit of foot.
Gossip.
Praise.
Cussin’.
Lies.
Confessions.
Stories told warmed in front of campfires about the headless ghosts who grew tired of haunting the kids who lived on the mattress above them and moved on to more familiar campaigns of teens in the woods. Tall tales recounted by a shy girl with sweaty tanned legs that stuck to a peeling faux-leather banquet seat, further taking her away from the moment at hand. Eyes ruby reddened after a night spent crying over misunderstanding after misunderstanding. A story with a beginning that was memorable overshadowed by a bitter ending that stung for months.
Then new stories came in through a crack in the door. Light shone in. A bit of illumination in a dusty room full of monsters and old memories. A sense of transcendence. Of going beyond these stories. We are not these stories. We are so much more.
What we call a self is actually a story about our experience of life. And we construct the story because we’re trying to give some order to what is actually a remarkably chaotic process. And then we get seduced by the seeming consistency of the story that we’ve constructed. And now, instead of just relating directly to our experience, we relate to our experience in terms of the story, and that’s where the difficulties start. One way of looking at Buddhism is as a way of learning how to relate to life without believing the stories that we come up with. And that just opens up extraordinary possibilities.
-Ken McLeod, Buddhist teacher and writer
