Tag Archives: Storytelling

“Literary License” and Personal Narrative

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I became “literary” lew when I started this blog about six years ago.  I increasingly realize that the choice of that moniker was more astute than I realized.  These six years have helped me explore further the inner recesses of my heart and I’ve learned that my early grasp of the world was very “literary.”  Then I was taught that the world I lived in was a very literal, linear-thinking world.  I dutifully complied and I’m glad I did, but wish I’d have done so with less passion! But now, pretty late in the old “ball game”, I’m using this literary license very freely and enjoying the freedom to interpret life from a less rigid perspective.  The world is multi-dimensional and I’m finding life much easier and pleasant, having slowly allowed this wisdom to sink in.

Decades ago friends introduced me to the notion that life itself is but a story and approaching it as such makes it easier to pose the question occasionally, “Now what’s the point of this story going on here, the one I’m being presented with, or the one that I find myself immersed in personally.”  This is simple use of Shakespeare’s “pauser reason” which, if employed here and there, can allow us to make better responses to parts of the story that we are presented with.  Otherwise, we will be unwitting participants in a narrative that is, unbeknownst to ourselves, setting the course for our life.  One simple example, drawn from my clinical practice of the past, is the “martyr complex” of someone who finds himself/herself constantly playing the role of the victim throughout life, not realizing that some unconscious need is being fulfilled.  When one self-created crisis has resolved itself, this person will seem to ask upon awakening the next morning, “Hmm.  Now what’s underway in my life today that will allow me to perceive myself being the victim, allowing me to start the drama mill of my life to going again?”  This person seems to pray daily, “Give us this day, our daily crisis…”

Though most of us aren’t martyrs or victims, we inevitably play some role that we are only barely aware of if at all.   I’ve found this “literary license” helpful in gaining some degree of awareness.

ADDENDUM—This is one of three blogs that I now have up and running.  Please check the other two out sometime.  The three are: 

https://wordpress.com/stats/day/literarylew.wordpress.com

https://wordpress.com/posts/anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com

https://wordpress.com/posts/theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com

story telling

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When I was a child, “story-telling” was just another expression for lying.  If someone said something that we saw as false, we would immediately declare with great passion, “That is not so!   That is a story!”  If someone had a history of telling falsehood, he/she was labeled with heavy opprobrium, “He/she is a story-teller.”  Even a benign “story”…such as a fairy tale…was a “story” because it was clearly made up.  The implicit assumption of that cultural verbal contrivance was that there was an objective reality and anything that differed was “a story.”

But story-telling was being maligned.  Story-telling is a wonderful way of conveying information; one could even say, “truth.”  And, technically the best we can every do is to tell stories and even history itself is a story that has evolved over the millennia.  Let’s take U.S. history, for example.  When I was taught this subject in the mid-sixties I found the subject fascinating and didn’t have to worry about critical reading or anything like that.  The story of U.S. history was merely a factual account of what had happened and I found it very interesting.  It was only in college that I learned to approach history…and the rest of our knowledge-base…with a critical mind.

Another powerful story in my youth was the Christian tradition.  But it was not presented as a “story”; it was presented as a factual account of what had happened two thousand years earlier with the life of Jesus.  I now see that too as a “story” but with that approach I have been able to glean great meaning which would have eluded me otherwise.  I see Jesus as an historical character who was an extraordinary spiritual presence.  The early Christians were captivated by the story of his life and death.  And they had little difficulty in believing that, yes, he had been raised from the dead.  These early believers perpetuated this story and contributed significantly to it.  Christian history has from that point been an unfolding of this original story, an unfolding that continues even today.

Let me close with an observation made by Harry Crews in the story of his own life:  Nothing is allowed to die in a society of a storytelling people.  It is all—the good and the bad—carted up and brought along from one generation to the next.  And everything that is brought along is colored and shaped by those who bring it..

It is important that we formulate and tell our stories.