The Stories We Tell Ourselves to Tell Others
But I wonder⎼ this drive can be so compelling. What is it we think we gain from sharing? What do we feel will happen or change by the act of opening our mouths and speaking? I doubt it’s just a release of pent-up emotion that we crave. And it must be something more than simply sharing with someone important to us something that’s important.
I’ve had some medical issues lately. And part of me wants to keep it all to myself, so in my own eyes and the eyes of the world, I appear healthy. But the questions about how to understand my health abound. What does this pain mean? Is there a diagnosis? The not-knowing can be frightening. A definitive explanation or label, even a scary one, can provide such relief.
And this is so true for all that goes on inside of us. When we look inward, hear a thought, feel a sensation or feeling, how do we know with any surety what it means? It’s so difficult to make sense of all that goes on inside us. We can feel our heart beating slowly or quickly. We can feel tension in our belly, a rawness in our gut, heat in my palm. But there are no bold printed signs on my inner roadways saying, “here I am” and “this is truth.” Our inner world is so vast and elusive⎼ and tricky. Anything we experience can be interpreted in so many ways.
And what about the strong impulse to share whatever news we have, about our health or any event in our lives? How much should we share? Our state of health is part of our identity. When we talk, we create a perspective on who we are. In a way, we try to shape reality itself. We select words, images, and create stories with ourselves as the main character. We become the hero or heroine of one version of our lives. This gives our struggles meaning and importance.
But to select, we limit and distort. We describe the indescribable; we create walls or boundaries around what is naturally boundaryless. And we think of these boundaries as points of identity, distinction, or separation, even isolation. So, how do we speak so it serves us instead of isolates us?
By creating a story of a self, we create something another person can relate to. By selecting a feeling or experience to share, we give another person a chance to enter our experience, to climb inside with us. Boundaries also create points of contact. A hand not only touches but can be touched.
And as I said earlier, our inner lives can be so fuzzy and confusing, so vast and limitless. Saying something about ourselves to another person is in a way a personal experiment. How we interpret our inner signals and outer events is crucial. We try one story and see if it holds up and feels right. Not only in the eyes and mind of the other person, but how it feels in our own mouth. We use conversations with others to make the fuzzy clear and give reality to ourselves. In making ourselves real to others, we become more real to ourselves.
But we need to be careful here. The story is just that, a story. The words about ourselves can never replace the felt reality. Storytelling can be very satisfying, even addictive. And it can shift everything, to focus on an illusion of unchanging identity instead of the constantly changing reality. And then we can’t find ourselves. We become a piece of fiction, and we empty even the original story of whatever truth was captured there.
So, what do we do? We can, in each moment, notice our breath, or feel sensations, where they arise, and in what strength. We notice an inclination or movement toward or away from something, to grab or reject, to view more deeply or ignore. To like, dislike, or not care. We can notice what’s true for us in that ever-shifting moment. We arrive right there, in the presence of another breathing being. We step out of our ideas of the other, and ourself, to the reality.
We might imagine there is an isolatable self that causes, on its own, things to happen. That moves totally to its own drummer. In fact, much of our society teaches this to us. But if we are separable from the universe around us, we feel isolated at our core. We feel something is missing, or, as Buddhist teacher and philosopher David Loy put it, we feel something lacking in ourselves. And we grow up trying to fill this emptiness with “reality projects,” with material, external things⎼ or beliefs, power, money, and glory. But all these do is frustrate us, make us feel lonely, dissatisfied, suffering. We can’t look only outside ourselves to satisfy what also lives inside us. We can’t fill a need with the way of thinking that created it.
A key teaching of Buddhism is that there is no inherent self that is separate from others, the universe. We can never step outside the world, outside time to perceive ourself. The drummer that moves us includes us and everything around us. When we move a hand, for example, we’re standing at a particular place on the earth, at a particular time. The movement dances with clouds and the breath of others. It startles birds. It feels temperature, moisture, the weight of the air.
When we move a hand, the whole universe moves in and as us. And when we speak with others and feel their living, breathing presence⎼ when we feel each word we utter holds this other person in its hands, maybe as real and important to ourselves as we are⎼ and when our words emerge from the truth of whatever is stirring inside us right then, we feel more alive, powerful. We know we’re not totally isolated beings but interdependent and inseparable from others and the world. And this is such a beautiful reason to speak up and share what we can of ourselves
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
