Stories have power. We all know this. Jesus taught love in parables. Aesop’s wisdom was embedded in fables. Biographers tell life stories. Stories touch our hearts, tickle our funnybones, challenge us, inform us, inspire us. And sometimes stories entrap us.
I have listened over the last year to one person’s stories about me, stories that portray me in a certain way, attribute certain thoughts and motives to me, define me by certain stereotypes, and assume certain facts about me. This narrative at various times has perplexed me, frustrated me, angered me, and saddened me. My instinct has been to defend, explain, argue, persuade, distance myself emotionally, and do all of that again. With no effect. I saw this person as locked into a narrative, a story in which I played an assigned role. It seemed to me that this person interacted not with me, but with this scripted role, which, at least in my view, had little to do with the “real” me. This person doesn’t know me at all, I told myself.
I tried to detach myself from the drama through a practice of bless and release. “I bless you and release you to have the perceptions you would choose. I love you always, in the ways that you will allow and to the depth that you will accept” (from The Way of Mastery). I practiced a lot. I reminded myself that for whatever reason, this perspective was important to the person who held it and that it had little to do with me. But it was still too easy to slip back into reviewing hurtful things that had been said (I actually had a list!), stewing about the unfairness of it all, rehearsing things I would like to say.
I could see that I was stuck in a state of disturbance. I could bless and release, and then all to soon, I would cast my line back out and hook the narrative once again. What was causing me to repeatedly step back into the conflict? Why did I give this person’s narrative so much power over my inner alignment and equanimity?
And then I saw it. Lurking behind all my feelings and thoughts and reactions was my own narrative. In my narrative, of course, I looked pretty good, not at all like the other person saw me. I was just as attached to my narrative of myself as this person was to their narrative of me. The conflict was between my narrative and their narrative. But neither narrative was the “real” me. My mistake was thinking that the conflict was between truth (my narrative) and their untrue story. But truth doesn’t have a narrative. Truth knows nothing of conflict. It just is. And there isn’t a real me and an unreal me. There just is … what? Without a narrative, there just is.
Oh wow, I had a good laugh. Rather than focusing on wanting the other person to change their narrative, I simply dropped mine. It was surprisingly easy. Problem solved. And, perhaps not surprisingly, when I dropped my narrative, the other person gradually softened theirs. A nice bonus, but not necessary to my own peace. These days I thank the other person for teaching me such a valuable lesson, which, I recognize, has now been communicated in a story!
Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself – and there isn’t one. ~Wei Wu Wei