Story and The Self
There is so much more to the Human Mind than anyone dared imagine. Because if you did dare, you would be deemed “Insane” and your credibility would be on the line. An individual without credibility, is invisible, mute, voiceless, unseen, nothing. Credibility is everything. And one word strips all of that away. Insane.
So we protect our Sanity. We guard it. We fight for it, argue, tread the lines of conformity and obedience all to preserve it… because the moment someone suspects you’re “off your rocker,” game over. You are Invisible and Unseen.
Suddenly, we give Power, Authority, and Expertise to the Deemers of “Sanity” and the Accusers of “Insanity.” We give Power to Judgers and Haters all on stand-by and at the ready to come down with their signal word of Eternal Damnation: “Insanity.”
There is no coming back from Insanity.
There is no cure.
Once you’re Insane, you’re always insane.
Unless…
You can communicate better, clearer, more eloquently than any other before you and deliver such Logic, Math, Physics, with such sound reasoning so as to command their respect on such Logical precision that your words are simply irrefutable.
Oh, yes. The cost of Insanity is high.
I was deemed “Insane” by the time I was 8 years old. I wrote Broken at the peak of my Insanity. I write this book now from the “other side” of Insanity, where Logic, Math, Ethics, and Physics Govern and Reign. And my mind today is no different than it was when I wrote Broken, and no different than when I was 8, and no different than when I was 4.
The only difference is Communication and Knowledge enough to Organize and give Name to the images in my mind, and then to assign them name, just so that I could communicate with the greatest precision exactly what it is I see and in detail to the Receiver.
No one, not even Cervantes through the Mind and “Madness” of Don Quixote, has traveled as far or as deep into the Mind as I. And this is what I have learned:
We are Story Beings.
No Animal in this world desires, craves, loves, needs story like we do. We Need it. We want it. We crave it. We collect it. When it is absent, we invent it. We share it. We hoard it. I do not have to tell you how many billions and trillions of dollars the Human Being spends every year on Television, Movie, Book, Cinema, Stage, and Radio alone just to obtain Story.
We are Story Beings.
Why? I asked, so many times. Why do we obsess so much over story? As a multi-genre author of Epic Fantasy and Dystopian novels, I appreciate better than most the depth of this question.
“What is our obsession with Story?”
We are Obsessed with Story because Story is what we are. It is how we learn, how we teach, how we understand, how we process, how we grow, love, live, feel, connect… Story is our Past, our Present, our Future. Story is who we are. What we want. Where we are going. What we seek to achieve. What obstacles were in our way along the way.
Story is the How.
Did she love?
Oh, but she did.
Did she live?
Oh, yes. She lived.
How? How did she live?
Well that is the Story.
Story is our How. Story is our Lives. And all of us are just looking for ours.
Through this book, you will learn about your Who, your What, your When, your Where, and your Why, but it is the How that is your Story. For the How is integrated summation of the Who, the What, the When, the Where and the Why.
How is your Story.
And for most of us, your Story is Missing. And when chapters of your Story are missing, so is misunderstanding.
Your Story is the summation of you and it is the Knowing, the Belonging, the Authority, the Naming, and the Owning.
And should you doubt this, turn your attention to the words “Authentic” and “Authority.” For these words share the cognate of “Author” because to have Authority and Authenticity is to be the Author… of your Story.
Because we are Story Beings.
And what kind of Story is this? *this author smiles* well… a Love story, of course. And it starts with Self-Love, the Foundation of Romantic Love.
Make no mistake, as we unravel your Mind, and the walls of Chaos that contain your rampant storm, ebb, as peace and clarity comes to you through these pages, you will see, with every piece that falls into logical place just how much You are a Story Being and how much You are the Author of your Story.
And then you will come to understand just how much Abusers usurped the Authorship from you and took your Story from you, making it all about them, leaving you a nameless character without a Story. How you were usurped from your Story so much that they trained you to conditionally and habitually and without your even knowing it, give your Story to others without their even asking…
How, in many cases, you sought out the stories of others, and, desperate for your own Story, you usurped the story of others. You may have even donned the Identities of Fictions. Desperate for Home, Belonging, Authorship, a Name, and a Story with which to call your own.
I loved the movie Scrooged with Bill Murray. Scrooge (Murray) goes on to argue with the Ghost of Past that his childhood was a happy one, and he recounts events of his childhood.
“Oh, Scrooge,” the Ghost says, “That’s an episode of Happy Days.”
“Well, what about…” And Scrooge tells of another memory he has.
“That was Lassie.”
This Fiction depicts a very real behavior of Human Beings. We desperately seek out and cling to Stories to fill us. And if you fail to Write and Author or Invent your own, you will borrow from someone or something else.
To not have Story… This is alone. This is abandoned. This is rejected. This is lost.
It is the complete and total loss of the Self, the Great Divide, the lack of Identity.
But a Story is not just the How; the summation of Who, What, Where, When, Why… The Story (Past, Present, and Future) is your Coordinates.
And you have lost your coordinates.