Story

“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.”

(Khalil Gibran)

Our story always needs a sunrise.

I know from experience that wanderers often sleep uneasily, feeling keenly into chilled darkness as they wait for a returning sun to shed new light. Dawn helps us make meaning, frame new understanding and gives us energy to continue our search.

It’s a familiar, enduring, if heroic narrative: a challenge arises and our seeker leaves the comfort of home, sets out on a quest, undergoes desperate trials during a long night of darkness then re-emerges, renewed, as a saviour to their community.

Our ability to story life like this is critical to the construction of our identity. Our stories aren’t just the narrative of our lives; we form our identity within them, our stories are our lives.

But in recent times, it’s often felt difficult to look back and weave tales of transition and success from the chaos and desperation of our experience. Convenient, redemptive or salvationist narratives are no longer so available to us; we look back and just can’t make sense or find meaning in, for example, the ways in which a pandemic has fractured our society and left so many grieving. And when we are faced with a narrative that simply falls apart, it can leave us struggling, alone, unable to find peace or resolution.

A friend recently burst onto my Zoom screen and announced the death of two close relatives due to Covid-19. Struggling with the shock, I realised that, despite the wider narrative of the virus, there are few people I know who have been so directly affected. I settled with him into his story of disintegration and grief and, as he spoke, we both slowly noticed the brilliant sunlight that was flooding into our offices. His sense making began to form a familiar, shared story; the loss was so quick, so brutal, so unnecessary, that we should always make the most of every moment we have, to enjoy life and use our time to make a difference to the experience of others.

We were reflecting on how easily we can sleepily drift through life as his concluding words physically shook me:

“Live every day. Wake up.”

So, this morning, I watched the sun rise.

Notes:

I’ve been enjoying Herminia Ibarra’s ‘Working Identity’ which charts the narrative of career transition and how our identities shift as we ‘try on’ new possibilities, telling new stories about our work and lives as a precursor to reliable, resilient transition.

You might like Julie Beck’s piece in The Atlantic: ‘Life’s Stories’ which carries the strap line: ‘How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative can shape who you are—and is a fundamental part of being human.’

Of course, Viktor Frankl’s 'Man’s Search For Meaning' occupies a particular space in this kind of literature. It is an outstanding book which “offers us all a way to transcend suffering and find significance in the art of living.”

And, at the other end of the scale, I highly recommend this comic take on disintegrative narratives from Scott Adams and Dilbert.