Are you happy with your life story?
How many times did you hear someone saying their life should be a novel? I should write it down one day, they tell you. You can only nod, maybe smile, as you cannot tell them it wouldn’t be much of a novel. A novella at best, but in far too many cases a life could fit in a short story, as there’s only so much you can write about standard lives spent in tedious jobs and conventional marriages.
Yet, everyone is entitled to their own novel, as this is how it feels to them. As Jung used to say, people need meaning in their lives and each one of us finds meaning in what we believe to be our life story.
Growing older, I increasingly tend to look at people in terms of the story they tell. It’s only natural since people my generation have pretty much written their story. The final chapters still missing can easily be figured out. They say you can change and rewrite your story at any point. It’s never too late. I doubt that. Those who manage to do that are the exception rather than the rule.
How many happy stories do you see around you? By happy I mean a story where the protagonist has few regrets and are more or less satisfied with their life. Of those who pretend to be content, how many are lying to themselves?
Think about the people you’ve known since they were young, full of dreams and the potential for true happiness. The romantic friend whose sensitive soul was squashed by decades of corporate drudgery. The girl with artistic hopes who never got to follow her passion. The smart guy whose extensive knowledge only led him to search for meaning at the bottom of a bottle. The woman who never found the courage to make a leap and plunge into the river of life, choosing to walk on the safe shore just watching the others sink or swim. Or - and I’m sure you know many of them - the men and women who were sold to the idea that the meaning of life is to have rather than be.
Years ago, when I was juggling a career and raising a child I was too tired to watch a whole movie at night. I’d set the timer to turn the TV off in one hour but usually drifted to sleep much sooner. I only got to watch part of the story and I never found it frustrating. That’s how it is, we only get to know the end of a small number of stories.
We are not supposed to know how our children’s stories unfold. Best you can do is hope they’ll end up with few regrets in their old age.
Then there are stories you wish you never knew the end. The lives you feel deserved at least a few more chapters if not a couple of volumes. The lives you’re glad you won’t see the end as you know where the plot is going and it’s not somewhere nice. And, yes, the lives where a surprising turn of events saves the protagonist who gets to become,as they say, the best version of themselves. I would love to watch such an unexpected plot twist. Which somehow brings us to the question of afterlife and the possibility of keeping an eye on the people in your former life.
As I was saying I’m perfectly happy with not knowing how stories end and I’d rather have more enlightening experiences in whatever afterlife there is.
Speaking of afterlife, we’ll always have George Carlin’s take on it. If I’m not mistaken, we watched this or maybe a similar Carlin piece after my mother died. She also used to say her life would make for a great novel and for her it did. It was her story.
Thanks for reading
All images are mine, taken at the Toy Museum in Basel
More than once I've been told that I should write my life story, to which I reply that it'd make a very turgid read. To quote Morrissey...'if you have five seconds to spare, I'll tell you the story of my life.
Five seconds? Wow... must be quite a story :)
Nobody says it like Carlin. I sure wish we still had him around to dispell all the illusions we are sold.
At the ripe old age of very nearly 70, I have embarked on a new vocation, homeopathy. This has given me energy and interest in the world that I thought I'd never feel again. The biggest obstacle to happiness, to passion, is to allow yourself to become trapped in a vision of how things have to be that is false. We do not have to take boring jobs that we stay in for decades on end because of the "security," we do not have to have big homes and fancy cars and the latest tech. We do not have to go into debt for anything at all. And especially, we do not have to become useless eaters in our old age. I have shed the illusion of how things have to be, and am happy.
No one would want to read my life though. I sure would not want to waste my remaining decades writing it.
Homeopathy is quite cool, I think. I tried some remedies for a sun allergy I have, but then next summer I couldn't find them on the market anymore. No wonder why...
I love the phrase you use "useless eaters". Not in the way the state tends to think of old people, but as in just wasting away your remaining days, with no real joy or interest in life. I find it so sad. I also find it hard not to remind people I care about that they're squandering the little time they have left, as I realize they're past change. Their story is written and they'll just follow the script to their grave.
That is very bleak! I will not go out in the bleak zone. I still have a great deal to do.
And for her and those who loved her, it did. I suppose that's really the only thing that adds meaning to any of our lives. The people who love us and whom we love, no?
It does, yes. Those who love us take the time to read our stories. Those who love us also carry with them our story, and we get to cause ripples for a bit more time.
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Carlin was truly a national treasure! I wonder what his IQ was? I'd guess it was pretty high.
After experiencing more than five decades on this rock I can honestly say a majority of people aren't really happy. They convince themselves they're content—they settle, excessively compromise to keep the peace, have secret desires they keep buried, wishes that they never see through.
I shudder to think about everything I missed out on when I was younger. Like you, I worked a corporate job and trained myself to go to bed early so I could give the best of myself to them during the day. It's hard to believe I did that for over twenty years but, on the bright-side, I escaped while I was young enough to reprioritize my life. I'm trying to make amends now and live a life that's more honest and richer in experience. It's not always an easy thing to do in this world, it takes focus and initiative, and doesn't always win you friends but it's worth it. It's easy to slip back into the old patterns.
Great blog, Rebecca!
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Those are such lovely toys. I can't imagine how long it took to carve those figures by hand and make all the tiny clothes.
A year-by-year (or even day-by-day) chronicle of our lives probably wouldn't follow the standard story structure of the five act play or three act bestselling novel (introduction, rising action, climax, dénouement...) That's why I've always wondered where that structure comes from, and why it seems to be so universal. It's like there's this pattern of what we feel life should be, and we can't help striving for it.
Or at least daydreaming about it, from the posts of our tedious jobs.
Maybe that's why so many people constantly stir up drama in their own lives.