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The Stories of Our Lives
John Pater, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, January
8, 2006
I. Significance of New Year & Year-Enders
I love New Year’s Eve. Of all the holidays in the year, New
Year’s Eve and Day are my favourite. It’s even bigger
than my own birthday. Our family either hosts a New Year’s
Eve party every year, or we’re with family having a New Year’s
Eve party. I don’t party the same way on my own birthdays.
I figure on New Year’s Eve it’s everyone’s birthday.
I see it as the passing of time for all of us, a rite of passage
even. In a very marked and obvious way, we see time changing; one
moment it’s 2005, the next it’s 2006.
But it’s more than an excuse for a party. For me, with that
passage of time comes a reflecting on the year that has passed.
I enjoy the year-enders that the media provide. I usually buy a
couple of magazines – Macleans, Time – that feature
the top news stories of the year, the top newsmakers, the top athletes,
the top artist. We watch CBC’s Royal Canadian Airfarce and
their comedic look at the year past during our New Year’s
Eve parties. I also find myself reflecting on my own journey through
the year; what has transpired for me this year, what were my personal
highs and lows, what have I learned and how have I grown. And so
in the midst of the celebrations, New Year’s is also a melancholy,
reflective time for me.
Helping me in my annual reflections is a journal I keep. It’s
not a diary because I don’t write in it every day or even
every week, but it is a record of some of my highs and lows during
the year. I also use it as a place to write down some of my favourite
quotes from the books I’ve read, or a line from a song I’ve
heard, or a provocative thought from a radio or TV program, or my
reaction to a major news event. And usually sometime around the
New Year’s break I sit down and read over my thoughts and
those quotes from the year past. And I’m struck every time
by this combination of my thoughts on my life with the quotes from
fiction and others. It seems that the fictional narratives I read
or watch play a significant role in providing meaning to the narrative
that is my life.
And so I’ve begun paying closer attention to this interaction
between the unfolding story of my life with the fictional and real
life stories that I encounter. And so a couple of years back I started
keeping a log of the movies I’ve seen, the books I’ve
read, and the musical concerts or live music events that I experienced.
I wanted to see if I could track in any tangible way how these fictional
or imaginative or creative stories impact on my understanding of
my own life and that of the events in the greater world.
Now before I explore this further, I’d like to take a few
moments to have us all reflect a bit about the stories that most
moved us in 2005, the stories that we most remember from the year
past. And we’ll make this personal so this is your year-ender
... your picks for the top stories of the year. Top news story;
Top sports story; Top arts story; Top Novel; Top Movie; Top personal
story.
II. Significance of story
So hang on to your list of top stories for 2005 because we’re
going to come back to them shortly. What I’d like to do now
is explore with you this interaction between the unfolding story
of our lives with the fictional and real life stories that we encounter.
What is the connection between the books we read, the movies we
watch, with the current event stories of our time and our own story?
And how is it that the fictional narratives we read or watch can
play a significant role in providing meaning to the narrative that
is our life?
I think the answer lies in the nature of story itself. Martin Levin,
Editor of the Globe and Mail Books section says: “Narrative
is still the greatest sense-making device we humans have ever invented
or discovered.” We do something powerful when we craft stories.
Here’s some further thoughts from writers who can speak more
profoundly about this subject than I can.
“Stories don’t exist in and of themselves, we make
them up, and cherish them, and depend on them - because, no longer
believing our paths to have been mapped out in advance, or our fate
to be in the hands of our Maker, stories are what turn our lives
into destinies! All of us are walking novels, teeming with main
and secondary characters, punctuated by moments of drama and long,
boring descriptions, ellipses and suspense, climaxes and denouements
... (Nancy Huston, An Adoration, 2003; McArthur & Company: Toronto)
“‘People are composed of stories not atoms’ is
one of my favourite aphorisms. It captures a complex truth ... There
isn’t a moment in the day that we are not defined by the stories
we carry around in our heads about our families, friends, the places
we live, love and hate. Without stories, we can’t understand
the present or have a context to predict the future.” (Clive
Doucet, Globe & Mail, Books, Oct. 29/05)
Isn’t that good ...
- stories are what turn our lives into destinies;
- all of us are walking novels;
- we are defined by the stories we carry around in our heads;
- without stories, we can’t understand the present or have
a context to predict the future;
- narrative is the greatest sense-making device.
If we accept the truth of what these writers say about story and
its ability to provide meaning, to define us, to help us make sense
of life ... If story can truly do all that, I’m wondering
if we should be paying a lot more attention to the stories we encounter.
What do you think? Have you got a sense of how all the stories
that you encounter influence your understanding of (to quote Douglas
Adams) “the meaning of life, the universe and everything”?
So let’s take a few moments now ... consider your top stories
for 2005, and reflect on how they are interconnected and on how
or whether they help provide meaning for your life. After a few
minutes of quiet reflection, I’ll open this question to the
floor and get some of your thoughts ....
III. How to integrate the stories of your life
As I’ve thought about this, I’ve realized that I need
to do more work to consciously bring the various stories of my life
into contact with each other, so that they in turn can shed light
on one another and on my life. I need to more often make connections
between the movies I watch, the books I read and the newscasts I
listen to and newspapers I read. I might be surprised by the ha-ha
moments that might come when I let story do its magic.
An example of how to do this comes from one of my favourite novels
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1993, Vintage Books,Toronto).
In that story a patient who is cared for by a Canadian nurse has
a special book. The book is called The Histories by the ancient
Greek writer Herodotus. What makes the book special is that the
patient has added to the book by “cutting and gluing in pages
from other books or writing in his own observations” about
his life. “He speaks in fragments,” says the narrator.
“And in his commonplace book, his 1890 edition of Herodotus’
Histories, are other fragments – maps, diary entries, writings
in many languages, paragraphs cut out of other books.” These
fragments and additions “are all cradled within the text by
Herodotus.”
Think about that ... this patient’s life story is immersed
in a classic text along with other literary fragments and stories
that the patient has picked up along the way. When the nurse, Hannah,
reads this book to attempt to understand who her patient is, she
reads something that is a collection of all the stories that he
has encountered. In the process she gradually comes to uncover the
mystery of who he is and understand more deeply her own World War
II context.
What if we did that ... took one of our favourite novels or a literary
classic, and began writing in the margins quotes from other books
or from movies, paste in news clippings from time to time, add in
our personal reflections on significant events in our life, throw
in maps of our holidays and other journeys ... I think the result
would be the authoring of a text of meaning for ourselves. I think
if we are more intentional about connecting the dots between the
various stories we encounter, like the English patient, we can be
the authors of our own texts of meaning.
So here’s the challenge ... (or maybe you can turn this into
your New Year’s resolution.) Keep track of the stories you
encounter this year: the fictional stories, the current events stories,
the sports stories, the arts stories, and the personal stories.
And if you can, note when they happen, and pay attention to how
they might interact with each other. When you go to a movie, take
note of what is happening in the news that day. As you’re
reading a book, note what is happening in your own life at that
time. Or maybe imitate The English Patient and “cradle”
your top stories of 2006 within a classic text of some sort and
see what kind of magic concoction the mix of stories will create.
John Pater is a member of the Unitarian Church of
Edmonton.
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