Birth

Who Knows What's Next?

Birth

Who Knows What’s Next?

“I like living, it gives me something to do.”

I’m not sure if I came up with that bit of wit or not. I’ve checked the most likely suspects: Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, and Jackie Vernon. I’ve exercised due diligence, Your Honor.

Could it be Rodney? 

Doesn’t matter, the line elides nicely into today’s dispatch.

The ‘something’ we live to do is ‘to do.’ Remember? Acting is doing. We live as active verbs. As we verb, we story ourselves alive. We emerge from mystery as an expression of Universal life-force.

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” ~Muriel Rukeyser

We co-create a series of events we call our life. Stories that, when told (selectively) in reflection constitute a narrative. 

No narrative, no obituary. 

FLASHBACK: Last Sunday

We make creative sense of life by storying, we use curiosity and imagination to let life story emerge in action:

- To find our place in the Universe

- To discover our identities in each new moment

- To recognize our needs and wants

- To let out needs and wants move us

- To form and navigate relationships

- To respond to a persistent flow of changes

- To live life alive

Which is to say, we (more or less) spontaneously discover ourselves as we do our lives. We story ourselves into life.  

When we story as actors, playing ourselves with creative intention, our natural curiosity quickens. 

We see more clearly. We live, actively doing, while keenly aware of what we are doing. We act and observe all at once. 

We live stories within stories. Conscious of self, though not self conscious. A festival of holons and fractal frenzy.

We story in loops. What we see in story presages what we do, and what we do presages the story we see.

As we pay attention to what we do and the created circumstances that give rise to what we do, we create ourselves again and again in each new moment.

"Acting is the life of the human soul receiving its birth through art."

~Richard Boleslavsky

STORY BASICS

It’s fair to say that anyone who has ever studied writing whether in the context of fiction or non-fiction (there’s a thin line at best) has been taught that all story consists of elements. Commonly referred to as the 5 W’s.

Who?

What?

Where?

When?

Why?

As actors we write stories in the medium of life. We discover them as they unfold in ordinary and extraordinary events. Often hard to tell ordinary and extraordinary events apart as they arise. We may have to wait for the obit.

Check in on your daily life. In each ’situation’ (a story within your larger story) aren’t you asking, in subtle or not so subtle ways, ‘who am I?’ 

Perhaps, in familiar circumstances you assume your identity.

Let’s say you went to medical school. You assume you’re a doctor. Are you the same doctor you were this morning, before you had tacos for lunch? Yesterday, no matter what you ate? Last year, before the malpractice suit?  

Likely you’re a different doctor as you meet the patient after time with the young couple you’ve just had to share a dire diagnosis.

The given circumstances or actable elements (what, when, why, where) and how how you contextualize them, changes how you see you. A name or title is never adequate to express who you are. Identity changes in  story context (you in relationship) and in story time (when).

Why did you go to medical school? Was your family influential in the decision? In other words, do you have a Jewish, Asian, or Indian mother? Are you a third generation doc, or the first one in an immigrant family? Were you a sick child who spent years as a hospital patient? 

How does the exposition (some combination of the various circumstance set out above) impact the doctor you are now - right now.

As HUMAN ACTORS we get to explore (an active verb) these questions in the process of doing. We don’t stop doctoring to ask questions in a literal way. Questions live in us. We sense them in a mind/body way.

When we remain alert to mind/body states and adjust creatively, we encourage enhanced intuition born of empathy, curiosity, and imagination. 

Practice:

Slow down. We often don’t notice changes because we spin too fast. Our minds go a mile a minute. We rush ourselves into numbness. So much to do. No time to catch a noticeable moment.

You will notice shifts. Maybe once or twice a day. Slow down. Easy does it.

A place you’ve frequented will look or feel unlike before. The light seems to have changed. Notice.

Someone you know well will look slightly different. They might behave in a way that feels slightly other than what you’ve come to expect, and you may feel differently in their company. Notice.

These modest shifts are not uncommon. Notice. 

Please don’t feel obligated to make a melodrama of the moment. Simply notice.

The more you notice thought/feeling shifts the more likely you are to grow more alert and aware. As you grow in awareness you will increasingly notice shifts in your identity. With practice, you will come to appreciate the changing nature of connections and how you see them. Your story sense will enlarge.

One ’small’ noticed moment at a time. 

These observations can test us. Early on they can unsettle and unnerve us, especially true in tenuous times such as the ones in which we now live.

An Examined Life Is Not Easy 

All lives lived alive call for courage. Courage flows from a full, vulnerable, and engaged heart. 

It helps to remember we are not alone. We are all connected to everything. We are the Universe revealing itself to itself, to each of us, and through us as HUMAN ACTORS, as we play in the Universal Theater.

“Every time we train our most sophisticated tools upon the central questions of our existence — Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? — the answer comes back clearer: Everyone and Everywhere” ~James Bridle

It’s difficult to know for sure whether we’re coming or going. The playwright, Tom Stoppard, suggests we “look at every exit as an entrance somewhere else.”

Entrances and exits? Two sides of the same journey. Impossible to tell the difference. A polarity. Take your pick. 

Vital to life lived alive is a comfortable relationship with ‘not knowing’ and ‘new beginnings.’ 

Each moment of life turns our story in new directions. We are born anew in every now. The plot, such as it is, swirls in endless motion. It is incumbent upon us to slow down and breathe. To pay attention. 

In awareness we live with courage and wonder.

“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.” ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As we live with less fear in ongoing stories we bring vitality to our lives. The deep impulse that animates our story, and the journey it takes us on, is a search for truth as a sense of direction. As guidance. Not a static representation of truth; the living truth, ALWAYS in motion. Truth that moves us. Living truth shifts in dynamic relationship to our unfolding stories. Fresh truths bubble up in a perpetual stream of 'aha' moments that point us toward lives lived alive.

We live and flourish in questions. Answers are questions masquerading as final forms in an appeal to our fears and insecurity. They are temporary at best. Life’s weather will soon enough peel away the veneer of answers to reveal the questions that they cover.

Notice. 

“Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. . . . By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength.”

~Pema Chodron

Viewing the universe as a complex of stories that ask life giving questions encourages us to live more intentional lives. By embracing the power of story, we can connect more deeply with ourselves, others, and the world around us - leading to richer, kinder, and more generous creativity.

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life so much as they are looking for the experience of being alive." ~Joseph Campbell

“When we are not sure, we are alive.” ~Graham Greene

Keep on storying, certain of uncertainty, with courage and awareness. Plumb the mystery.

We discover ourselves, each other, and the whole Universe in the felt experience of life lived alive.

Until next time..

Lights Up!