Telling Stories to Others (Let's Not Overlook The Ones We Tell Ourselves).

Here's a shining example of what we think about stories:



We typically see a story as something 'made up', an abstraction from the truth either completely fictitious or embellished with imagination which then removes it from the reality of the events on which it's based.

We also commonly think of stories as something we tell other people. Arguably the most important and potent stories are those we tell ourselves. Each of us has created stories about who we are. Quite literally, we had no choice: it was needed as a way of giving order to the psyche and structure to our identity. Overtime, these stories have been crafted into a coherent narrative about ourselves and our place in the world.

The intriguing part in it all is that many people are not aware that this process goes on, existing as it does usually in the subconscious. (Stephen Johnson's excellent book Mind Wide Open illuminates many ways these silent operators influence our actions.)

But if you have ever talked to a woman who colors her hair, especially one that has become and stayed a 'bottle blond', she will tell you quite calmly that this is who she is. That it fits how she sees herself and not just in the mirror; it is how she feels on the inside.

Such women do not have amnesia. They are well aware of the duplicity at their own hand and they are reminded of it at no time greater than with a showing of roots - evidence of an act of past intervention and a pressing reminder for the need to repeat it. But it does not matter and it does not violate the integrity of the idea.

Stories to ourselves are a secret pact. We know we're fibbing and there's nothing wrong with that because - after all - it is the truth in the midst of the fabrication. Psychopaths aside, we can rarely lie to ourselves and get away with it . Deep down we remember, even when we forget.

Happiness everwhere

A OFD colleague commented here in an ealier posting that raised awareness is often accompanied by a dramatic increase in the frequency of its obervation.

His last post on happeness has had a similarly infectious effect on me, one of which was while watching The Life of David Gage starring Kevin Spacey in which he delivers a stirring perspective that treads on the same turf as the last blog:

...about outer-directed fulfillment

"Fantasy has to be unrealistic because the second you get what you no longer seek you don't - you can't - want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent, or out of reach. It's not the 'IT' you want, it's the fantasty of the 'IT'"


..about chasing wants and what happinesses truly lies

"Living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals, not to measure your life by what you've attained in terms of desires but by those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. The only way we can measure the signifiance of our own life is by valuing the lives of others"

Comfort - Part Two

Once one starts rummaging around for things in the fridge one finds more than one expected. The same is true of heightened awareness of an issue, idea, pattern or a word: it starts cropping up with startling frequency.

So it was a discovery -- but not a surprise -- that the issue of 'comfort'(and discomfort), a topic OFD broached a couple of days ago here suddenly started appearing, one connected to a famous Danish filmmaker and the other to a University of Chicago Psychologist.

Escaping the clutches of comfort is what Susanne Bier seems intent on doing. "I have got this fear of becoming comfortable" she says, carefully pronouncing all four syllables and letting her face, her tone and her body language convey complete distaste.

It does not seem a purposeless focus or restlessness, rather she seems keenly aware that for her it represents losing a vital edge and clarity she brings to her works, among them Open hearts (2002) Brothers (2005) and After the Wedding (2007) the last having received an Oscar nomination.


The other context in which comfort came up is an academic study of the pursuit of happiness. Mihaly Csikszentmihaly in a great read Flow suggests the underlying function of a variety of pieces of cultural machinery - religion, philosophies, arts, rules of social classes, and comforts - help shield our minds from the tyranny of chaos and, as he puts it "help us believe that we are in control of what is happening and give reasons for being satisfied with out lot."

So there we have it. The pursuit of comfort is an illusion, a device to make us feel connected and secure in an uncertain world and fend of the ontological wolves of anxiety from the door.*


Post script
*This is a turn of phrase not an anthropomorphic reference.