10_14_2019

Unfolding Insights! from Writing One’s Narrative

I shared with readers in an earlier Blog that I had devoted a good part of my summer to developing a course on Composing Your Life’s Story.  I can’t pinpoint exactly what drew me to this exercise, but I know that my spiritual-related readings and practices coupled with my interest in continuing to evolve as one ages are contributing factors.

There is no doubt that as we age we have more choices in how we spend our time, and with key factors in place, we have the option to be more intentional in choosing activities that will help us evolve in becoming the person we are capable of becoming.

But as I learned from my research over the summer, taking the time and doing the work required to compose our own narratives frees us from the constraints that we may have acquired by believing the stories about ourselves that others have imposed on us or from beliefs from life’s events that we have bestowed on ourselves.

These uninvited, un-examined stories may come from direct statements, from indirect insinuations, or from emotional complexities that surfaced in dysfunctional families.  Until we actually delve into the forces and events that helped project us on the paths that have led to our current evolvement, we don’t know whose luggage we may be carrying.

I was excited by the readings I was doing this summer.  Many of them had to do with writing one’s

memoir, and presently while I’m not all that interested in writing my memoir, I am leaving that door open in case I change my mind.   I am, however, most interested in acquiring a deeper understanding of my own development.  I believe that such clarity will serve me well on two fronts:  a) I will gain a richer understanding of my own process of evolving, and b) the resulting clarity may provide guidance in the next stages of my evolvement.

I was struck by a statement I encountered when I was doing the research for this course.  Writing Your Own Narrative will help you develop more self-compassion as well as more compassion for others.  At the time I read the statement, I could understand how this work might help me develop more self-compassion, but I didn’t quite see how it would help me develop greater compassion for others.

And, had I not had these opportunities to share this work in group settings, I’m not convinced that the experience of deepening my compassion for others would be as great as what I’m finding.  Participants in both sessions of this course have shared some deeply personal stories from their childhood and adult years.  Their stories covered the emotional spectrum of joys, sorrows, losses, struggles, etc.

It’s fair to say that all of us have been deeply impacted by this experience.  I have actually known many of the participants through my work in the Parish for many years, but I had no idea about their childhoods and the pain and suffering that they have experienced in their lives.  The work has made very clear that we are so wrong when we think no one else has had the kind of crazy life or come from a dysfunctional background like our own.  But after listening to the shared stories, I found myself bringing more compassion to all my interactions.  I am amazed by what each of us have been asked to cope with in our lives, and that realization has made me be more patient with folks whose way of being can at times present me with challenges.

I’m also sitting with the realization of just how much most of us don’t share about our lives.  There are probably many reasons to explain why we don’t share more, but I am realizing how much we miss by our silence.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in offering this course, but I was alert to the boundary that this isn’t a therapy group.  I am very fortunate that this first group of participants are sophisticated in understanding the difference between a therapy group and a general setting in which one can be responsive to and supportive of another’s sadness.

I think the age range in the classes is somewhere between the late 30s and the mid-80s.  The older folks in the groups grew up in homes where the parents were dealing with the aftermath of WWII, the lingering impact of the Depression, and there were not a lot of supports at that time for the struggles that parents and families can face in the best of circumstances.  As a result, there are multiple occasions from our childhoods in which we experienced a lot of confusion and sadness.  One of the prevailing sayings during the 40s and 50s was “Children are to be seen but not to be heard.”  There were many family secrets that were never explained to the children, and as we look back on our childhood years, there were many things we did not understand until much later in life.

Not surprisingly, depending on how participants have grieved their losses in the past, there are multiple opportunities for sadness to be part of this experience.  I have been and will continue to search for ways in which to clothe this sadness in a blanket of hope and future joy.

I picked up a book – Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World – by John O’Donohue that I purchased recently and found a lovely chapter on Aging.  I’ve included an excerpt here:

“I often think there is a place where our vanished days gather, and that place is memory.  One of the fascinating things about old people is the way they stay around the well of memory.  If you are willing to sit with them, you won’t get analytical sentences from them about was it this or was it that, or could the meaning have been one, two, three.  What you will always get is a narrative about events from their childhood, which are never straight replications of what happened, but are the bones of the event, enfleshed with image and with an anecdote and with narrative.  In a strange way, nothing is ever lost or forgotten; everything that befalls us remains within us. There is within you the presence in a refined sense of everything that has ever happened to you, and if you go looking for it, you will find it…Memory is a particularly intimate and sacramental human phenomenon and there is great depth and density to everyone.  The image in nature that is really profound in relation to that is the tree; all the rings of memory enfold all the years of growing, blossoming, dying, building, blossoming, growing, dying, and enfold all the elements of experience.  In a similar way, within the clay part of each soul, the rings of memory are there, and you can find them.

A lot of the experiences that we have in the world are torn, broken, hard experiences, and in broken, difficult, lonesome experiences you earn a quality of light that is very precious.  I think of it as quarried light.  When you come through a phase of pain or isolation or suffering, the light that is given to you at the end of that is a very precious light, and really when you go into something similar again, it is the only kind of light that can mind you.  It is the lantern that will bring you through the pain. 

…If sad, difficult things happened to you, and you have earned quarried light, again and again you should visit that light, and almost like the light around the tabernacle that signals the presence, you should allow that light to come round you to awaken the presence that is in you, to calm you, to bring you contentment, as well as to bring you courage. 

O’Donohue has gifted us with some beautiful and hopeful imagery and words of comfort; keep your lanterns close and well-stocked, as you never know when we might need them!