Once Upon A Time ...

Once Upon A Time ...

Once upon a time, there was a story ... about ... well ... you ...

We all have a story in which we live. We create the characters, the settings, the mood, the conflicts, the theme, and even the inevitable climax.

Some of our stories are happy, some sad, some tragic, some just downright morose. Whatever way our story bends, whatever feelings evolve from the day-to-day occurrences in our little narrative, we seem to struggle through the bad times as best as we can, and we barely notice the good.

Some days, we stop and wonder if we should change the plotline by adding a few new characters, if we should seek a new setting in which to live, or maybe, should we have the strength of purpose, if we should attempt to resolve some of the conflicts that have driven our story forward from the days when we were young. Most days, however, we simply let the story unfold, as if it had a life of its own and was completely separate from us.

Too often, we forget that we are the author of our lives. We allow chance and circumstance, friends and foes, time and space to write the long passages of description that place us in an oasis of happiness or a quandary of hopelessness. We engage in moments of comfortable dialogue that is either truly a comfort or simply a string of familiar words, words we have practised over and over again, until eventually, they become meaningless.

Instead of writing the story, we become the story. We become the person other people expect us to be. We dare not change the course of our narrative for fear that we will lose sight of the very things — the people, the situations, the monotone script — that we have come to know and trust. Instead of breaking through the repetition of a mundane existence, we settle in for a good long read through the pages of a life that has no twists and turns, no dangerous decisions, no unexpected unfolding of events.

In the end, by the time we turn the last page over and prepare to close the book forever, we look back over the chapters of our experience and wonder how the events of our lives might have been different, if only we had paid more attention to an opportunity here or had steered clear of an obvious impasse there.

You see, every story wants revision, wants a second or third rewriting, but life proceeds too quickly to allow for some kind of reconsideration through the more objective eyes of an astute editorial assistant. We are always on our own, and before we are able to rethink the consequences of our actions and reactions, we publish ourselves for all the world to peruse. We reveal the raw pages of who we are, the words and punctuation of our dreams and our despair, and turn the matter over to others who will skim past the most important passages and focus on the failures of our rhetoric, our inability to describe in word or image just who we once were, who we are now, and who we hope to become.

Worst of all, we will be judged, applauded or disgraced, by all who have happened upon the story of our lives.

Once upon a time, there was a story ... and you were either its hero or its victim, someone who actively inspired events or who passively followed the course of events along the safest storyline available. Before you scribble "The End" across the bottom of your final sheet of paper, do so without regret or remorse. We imagine ourselves one way, surely at our best, but we must also inscribe our best across the hearts of those who gather, late at night, to hear us tell what we dreamed of becoming, no matter how short of the mark we fell.