A Short Story About Stories
(the Cumulative Library of Mankind)
(the Cumulative Library of Mankind)
Yo! Ho, Ho, Ho... Merry Christmas! And if you can't be merry let me suggest that you marry Christmas... even for a day. No ceremony necessary. Only a surrender. It's a nice time, if you live on a space of this planet that allows you to take a day off from the everyday. Indulge in a Day of Peace... even if it feels like some kinda fantasy. It can be as real as you allow it. It's between your ears, there for the acceptance, if only you want it.
Just like most everything in our minds, it's choice that prevails... choosing between one or another. How do you think written language began? It's not a given that everyone was born with the ability to understand, much less use, written language. It took someone (followed by many others) to put our daily sounds into symbols. Then think of how these symbols have become the alphabet of sounds - the more symbols that are strung together the longer the sound, and not just long! Nope. We add our emotion once we understand this symbology... we take it to the next level. Over the years, if we write, we grow with our written language.
(Getting back on track with the first paragraph, "if we want it..." Yes, 'if' is a pause before decision making - we all don't act before thinking, most of the time, anyway...)
We've developed stories that have been passed down for a long, long time. Oral traditions superseded the written stories, but stories that last as long as those we pass on to the next generation are stories that we identify with. We connect to the storyline - like fish we're hooked. But a time invariably comes when the story (pick your own) goes out of favor. It's not the base story that lacks, but the wording describing the emotions, the action, the personalities, the environment(s)... you get the idea.
Then the people that want those stories to continue update the stories using the state of language of 'today.' A change in the stage props... this being done to recruit new readers to the story. Even the Bible has new editions, new words drawing in a newer generation. Keepin' things fresh. We humans like freshness!
Mankind loves their stories. We connect to others experiences, some more so than others, of course, but it's the connection that's most meaningful. We all would like to connect to others on some level or another. We're social beings, by and large, but we do enjoy our privacy, too. It's one of the dualities that goes on with us - social/private.
When we read our stories we're normally in a private mood. And when we see and hear our stories, through theater, we assume the social part of us. The fact that we assemble as a group, that's indicative of socialization. Doesn't really matter if we all agree as long as we're together... together enough not to interfere - that's being uninvited into our privacy. No, no..!
(This could lead me into the Story of Etiquette, but I won't go there. Instead I will continue tapping on this Dell keyboard and continue with the Story About Stories...)
As to the suggestion that we're subject to the yin/yang principle, would it not follow that any story that moves us is not so much 'moving us' but 'nudging us'... a pat on the back, a little encouragement to hang on to the story.
Santa Claus is a wonderful story. But it's not a story that we listen to daily. We're unable to live the Santa Story everyday. It's against our dual nature. Even the best of stories aren't (or at least shouldn't be) lived everyday of our lives. We make our own story as we go along - every day a new chapter, each year a new volume. Not everyone writes their story down, obviously, but we create our own story even if it's not documented.
But our own stories are in part tiny bits and pieces of other stories that we relate to. We're sum totals of our own living, even if we're not Santa Clauses, Sidartha's, Joan's of Arc, or Jesuses. We mean something to someone, somewhere, (somehow). When we attached to our story reading or story seeing, we left behind part of ourselves at the same time... and a pleasant feeling is an important element in any story to pass on to others. The more popular the story the more feelings were both taken by the audience and left by the same audience.
These feelings don't need to be what we call 'good'... they can be 'bad,' i.e. scary and disturbing while reading or watching horror stories. But whatever emotion a story provokes, it's shared between the story told and it's reader/viewer.
The "Boo!'s" a story receives never does the story much good, does it? Negative criticism diminishes a story, weakens it until it can no longer survive memory. There's been more short-lived stories that survivors. A lot like most things in life, eh?
So whether we reread, listen to or see again a story that we enjoy, we make those stories more and more believable or even possible in our lives. They become such a reality that we know them as being true... at least true enough to know our emotions have been stirred. That's the best part - feeling ourselves light up... feeling alive and good. What a feeling having our senses excite us confirming that we are something worth living.
A sense of worth is the best of stories. It's a story that has as many facets of living as there are humans. And those stories are the story of mankind's life - the ups and downs and return to ups; the loss of love, the finding of love... the Emotional Story of Understanding Our Self - what makes us what we are. Stone by emotive stone we make ourselves into our Individuality - unique as all other life. But not without imagination - the breath of life for the acts of creativity, essential to becoming our wholeness. Without imagination we would lose reason for being. Starved for purpose our senses would cease to exist and creativity would dissipate into the ethers of no-thing.
So, bringing to a close to this Stream, the Story of Stories - the Cumulative Library of Mankind, (at our most intelligent/ignorant, our most loving/painful, most happy/sad, most real/fantastical selfs), be assured that the Story is always alive, always changing, developing, growing as does our species upon this one strange, wonderful planet among billions and billions that are known to have existed thousand of light years ago.
Have a Day of Peace!
Cecil
24 December 2007
Share the peace - Share a Piece
