After nourishment, shelter and companionship,
stories are the thing we need most in the world.
~ Phillip Pullman
- - - - -
I wonder sometimes about our lives as stories. Do our lives - when boiled down - end up as a single lesson or theme or moral? Are our stories so different from those of others? Do our lives all end up with the same summary - "Be good," or "Help and be helped," or "Try harder"? I don't know.
And what if our own stories are not ours to keep? I am a relatively private person, but what if the story of who I am and what I do belongs to the universe or the world or society and not to me? I wouldn't like it much - it is scary and makes me feel vulnerable to think that someone else owns the meaning of me. But maybe if I get to craft it, it wouldn't be so bad.
None of us really gets to craft our own legacies though, right? That is done after we're gone. Sometimes by people who don't know anything about us.
But maybe that is why people blog or post on Facebook or use Twitter. To help provide some framework for their lives and stories. To give their own meanings before someone else does that.
Or maybe they blog and post on Facebook or use Twitter because they want you to know what they are watching on TV or how their food looks tonight.
(pause)
Maybe that is the story of their lives.
I won't judge.
(pause)
Out loud.
