So I guess the only fitting thing to do today is circle back around to what we started with—the power of stories.
And the message is simple: if you are a human being, stories will always frame your reality. Your stories, whether you wrote them yourself or whether you’ve simply embraced ones that others have written for you, will always build the boxes that you live in—like your home. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as you never forget that both Reality and the realm of Possibility are always much, much larger than that box you’ve chosen to live inside.
I know it makes you uncomfortable to think about, but Reality is too big to fit inside your worldview. Reality is too big to fit inside a single species, a single race, a single philosophy, religion, gender, culture, political party, country, or civilization. Reality is big. As big as everything there is. And out of everything there is, we know hardly anything at all. And Possibility is even larger than that. That is deeply humbling, but it should also be just as encouraging.
It means the stories you grew up with don’t have to define you. You can edit them, hack them, or just toss them out and write a new one for yourself. It means the future is not hopeless because there’s so much more that we’ve yet to learn. It means the future need not look like the past IF we choose to let go of old stories and choose to write new ones. It means, as Shakespeare said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I know I say this all casually as if writing a new story is an easy thing to do. It’s not. The old ones run deep and hold on tight. Frankly, if it was easy I’d be out of a job. So in that sense, yay stories! It’s not easy, but it is possible.
You might think I’m suggesting we’d do better to get rid of stories altogether. I’m not. That’s impossible. We are storytellers—no stories, no us. And stories are utterly magical. They have a way of taking one sliver of Reality and making it shine like nothing else can. No, all I want you to do is never forget that you have as much power over your stories as they do over you.
And in our deeply divided and troubled nation I also might suggest that we all sit down and listen in earnest to someone else’s story, and in doing so, have the humility and courage to let it edit our own.
I know I’ve said this before. I’ll no doubt say it again. It was simply on my mind and I always honestly share with you whatever’s on my mind. And also, some stories are worth repeating.
In the end it’s just a suggestion. Just a reminder in case you’re feeling stuck or constrained or hopeless.
And just in case you’ve been thinking maybe it’s time to write a new chapter, do it!
Rewrite your story, and take one more step toward building yourself a beautiful life.