The Jews were to blame -- thousands of people subscribed to that story, and it created a catastrophic reality. The Muslims are to blame. The Mexicans are to blame. We’re separate from others. We’re not as good as the next person. We’re better than the next person. This person is only pretending to want to get together with me.
It’s all a story. It’s a story that we create right into our reality.
We have a tendency to invent arbitrary norms to stay comfortably inside of a collective social story. A story that makes people feel safe, because others prescribe to the same one they do.
Great, we’re all telling the same fiction and that makes it easy for everyone.
Except that we get so hyper-aware of staying inside the lines that it’s not actually comfortable for anyone. It’s stressful, and crowded. There’s too many of us in here. Being comfortable in the lines...it’s all an illusion, and we tell ourselves it’s not, that it's safer in here. Less chance of being noticed.
When you step outside that shared story, and start to tell the one that feels right, it upsets some people, at least temporarily. This makes me think of my 10 year high school reunion when no one was on the dance floor, and everyone was “comfortably” stuck to the walls of the bar. The organizer came over and asked if my group of friends would start dancing to get things going, and we did. Alone.
I glanced around and there were people staring, some gawking, and others trying to hide their secondhand awkwardness and embarrassment. That wasn’t about us. That was about them telling themselves a story that it’s awkward to dance in front of people. That people will judge them, and think it’s weird, because that’s the story they subscribed to about us, about themselves, and everyone else there.
After a few songs when they realized the world wouldn’t implode and no one was throwing tomatoes at us, they got their asses on the dance floor and had a great time. We all danced together until 3 in the morning and told a new story: this is fun.
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I suffered for years with anxiety. I’m still working on it. I’ll never forget the sinking feeling leaving my therapist’s office after our first visit. I came in with the expectation that I would be cured of anxiety after going to therapy, and she said, “You’re never cured of anxiety. You just learn to deal with it.”
Fuck that.
I didn’t want to deal with it the rest of my life, I wanted to be cured. Two years later, I think I finally understand what she meant by dealing with it.
Anxiety = bad storytelling.
Stop telling bad stories, and it will help you deal with anxiety. There’s chemicals, and hormones, and brain connections that all contribute to inducing anxiety, which is what makes it so hard to deal with, but it starts with stories.
I used to tell stories of a dinosaur named Jerome, and hot air balloons saving dolphins from sharks, and as I got older, those stories morphed into me getting eaten by metaphorical sharks, and no hot air balloon to save me. I invented all the ways my boyfriend wasn’t really in love with me, or that I wasn’t interesting enough for people to want to be around, or that I alone could fix and save my relationship. It was all a story. It was a story that was so badly invented that it literally suffocated me.
Ever had a panic attack? It’s invented suffocation.
The mind is fertile ground. When we poison the soil with stories that aren’t true and don’t serve us, they grow their roots so deep in there, and it takes more than a shovel to rip them out. There's fragments left--small seeds, and you'll probably never be able to pull them all, but the goal is to stay conscious, and weed as you go along. Stay aware of the stories, and illusions. Know which seeds are in there.
If you wake up one day with your beautiful garden suffocating, at least you recognize it is. You can’t save the garden if you don’t see the weeds. Imagine everything you ever wished for your in life. Think BIG. Many of us stay small, because this is the story we tell about how our life is. We don’t feel it’s right to think bigger and better. Why not? Reality is just a story, anyway, so tell the one you want.
Get out of the box and away from the wall. It’s much too crowded anyway.
Oh, and bring a shovel.
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