Thanks Salt Magazine for the feature here. I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of words and the stories that shape our experiences of pretty much everything. We live by our stories. Seriously. During this time of COVID19, when narratives of panic and despair and world-ending fear are shaping our every day reality, it’s hard to think of another story. I love this saying by a Lakota Elder: “Everything. Everything is Story.” I can make the narrative a hopeless one, or a hopeful one. I can write my own life as a series of disasters and failures, or as a series of resilient overcomings: I have lost, continents, houses, people I’ve loved. I have made decisions I wish I could unmake because other options in retrospect would have been so much better… etcetera. That’s the one story. The other one is: I’m alive. I live. I breathe. I’ve also gained so much insight, gained friends, new people, found a place to call home, written books, found a job I believe in. So sure, there’s no power to change what happened, to recoup the losses, but the past is a story I tell myself, and the future in fact, is a hazy dream that never comes. There’s only today. Hopes and dreams may never transpire. But today, I’m planning to be aware of my own story-making, and write a narrative that features the things I treasure and value – that make the day worth every second it’s being lived. Our collective story of Life After Covid19 is uncertain. But the future is always uncertain. Maybe, for the first time, we’re learning how true that is…
