No Stories Attached
Human beings LOVE to tell stories. We are story-making machines from sitting around campfires and sharing oral traditions to the film-making industry that brings in $25.8 billion annually. And books that still sell because folks love a good story. You should see my bookshelves! And yet, many of the stories WE might be telling could be our own kryptonite. I’ve ham-stringed myself many-a-time because of the story I was telling in my head.
Maybe you can relate? If you’re like me that story inside your mind can be so very compelling and all-consuming.
Metaphysical workbench time: think of the last time you were very upset. Did your mind start telling you a story about it? Did that story run on auto-repeat, looping over and over? Did that story start to confuse you, alter the situation, obfuscate any clarity? Did that story help you to have a better experience? Most likely not.
In my experience, that story gets me all wound up. It can create enormous stress in anticipation and even color the entire experience as it’s happening. It also gets me in big trouble. After a while that story in my head feels so real that I come to think of it as the only reality when actually it was just a story I was telling. Not to mention what happens when I interact with the person I’m telling that story about. He or she may feel like I’ve had a whole conversation without them, like I’m 15 pages later in a script they don’t have.
A few examples about storytelling. If you’re hiking and you hear something rustling in the bushes, telling the story that it’s a rattlesnake is going to make that hike terrifying…until you see it’s really just a family of quails which are so precious your heart could just melt. So do you want to have a terrifying hike or a precious hike? And if it is a rattlesnake, you’re not hiking anymore anyway. It’s time to skedaddle!
Recently, I stood in a rather long line at the checkout in the grocery store. Instead of telling the story that my time was being wasted and listing off all that this store should do differently to serve me better, I turned to the gentleman behind me and struck up a conversation. It was the most delightful experience of my day. He was a musician who just moved to Albuquerque from Virginia. We spoke about how much we love the more laid back pace and how all the musicians seem to know each other here. I was almost disappointed when the cashier was ready for me.
I also had a surprise when I came home from work one day and my spouse had put together a storage unit for our bathroom…without me asking him to. Now I could tell stories about that all day long like what does he want in return, or he knows he’s in the doghouse so he’s doing this thing right now to appease me, or this kind of initiative isn’t going to happen again. Or, I could say thank you, offer up sincere appreciation for his help, and allow it to be what it is. Let it be a short story. He was helpful and handy. How nice. Thank you. The end.
What if we were to live with “no stories attached”? No stories going into an experience; no stories going out of an experience. Just being fully present with what is in a “be-here-now” way, as Ram Dass espouses. That would be revolutionary.
Revolutionary in the figurative way of rebelling against the powers-that-be, the collective unconscious, and modern media which all spin the worst possible scenarios while at the same time rebelling against toxic positivity that tells the story that it’s all good. How about the Buddhist story that life is neither good nor bad; it just is.
This is revolutionary in a literal way as well. It turns me around, makes me do a 180 away from creating my own chaos. I turn away from the madness in my mind, take a deep breath, and then allow it all to be such as it is…allow that experience to tell me the story, not the other way around. What a far more curious and beautiful way to receive the experience of this lifetime; to step out of my agenda and facilitating and storytelling, forcing life to recite the script in my head and then suffering when there’s a discrepancy between my story and reality.
From ancient wisdom, “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.” Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming
So, I challenge us all to cure this disease of the mind by releasing the insanity-creating stories we tell. Redirect ourselves every…single...time a story even begins to creep into our brains. Live with no stories attached before, during, or after so as to experience the richness of life as it is already. Then we might have a real story to tell of the beauty and wonder of a life fully experienced.