When Every Day is Day One

Each day we seem to enter a story. The introduction starts when we wake up. What we think and do is a lead into a plot. Yet our goals are too often the same; get to work on time, do my job well, figure out dinner and how to spend quality time with the kids, find some quiet time to breathe, and go to sleep. Maybe read the next chapter in a book if we are lucky.

But a story demands more than a series of events. There needs to be conflict. A plot with an intriguing setting. Character change over time, complex and maybe unexpected. A resolution that does not solve the conflict as much as allow the characters in a story to resolve the conflict and find more peace within themselves. Above all, this story wants the reader (and ourselves) to "stay with it", if I can quote Tom Newkirk's book Minds Made for Stories.

Maybe that is why people experience hopelessness and end up turning to less healthy behaviors. They have no story. They aren’t struggling with a conflict that productively challenges them to achieve their inspiring goals. Maybe they have no goals. Instead, they just struggle. They lose more than they win. Defeat becomes the overwhelming setting and context.

Blaming outside factors for this malaise can only go so far. If there is a predisposition to mental health concerns, that certainly needs more outside support. For everyone else, maybe we forgot the importance and the enjoyment of a story. How might we place ourselves as the protagonist in our personal journeys? We need a goal that we desire to reach, an objective so important that we are willing to struggle through the struggles to achieve it.

Everyone wants to be inspired. We look to movies, to books, to other people’s lives for examples of who has overcome obstacles to realize their dreams. I have no problem with that. My concern is that if we only live vicariously through others’ experiences, their personal goals and journeys can become a substitute for our potential. Maybe we are susceptible to forget what we were passionate about... We need to start our own stories. Stories that other people will want to read about and be inspired by in their own personal journeys. Stories in which we are the protagonist, seeking success.