Human Beings are Story Inventors

Ray 7#  Human Beings are Story Inventors.

After nature, our stories start to dictate our being. 

Only would we know we created our stories ourselves...
Only would we know we have believe our stories as if they were true.

Giving those storied up, allowing the reality that what you have believed in all your life is not The truth, takes courage.

The moment we are born, we are helpless creatures, totally depending on our parents.
The way to communicate about our needs is to make noise, cry and scream.
There is no choice in any being at all.
Nature, instinct dictates our being and survival is the theme.

Around two years old we discover language. The world around us is getting meaning by naming everything.

We learn to communicate by language.
We cry and scream less and less and ask for what we need.
Later on we will learn to debate and even manipulate through language.
And we start building the story of who we are.

Events that happen, things, painful words that parents, teachers or other people say or do, leave a mark that influences the possibilties of being.

This is how I built the story of who I was:

My mother kept my brother home from school and gave him an extra icecream. And I didn`t get one. 

I was six years old. I invented and started to tell myself  the story that my brother was more important to my mother than I was. I had had that thought before and now I saw the evidence. I was right. My mother loved my brother more than she loved me.

From that moment on I invented ways of being to compensate for that which I thought I lacked. For my being not as good as my brother.

My needs had to be met!

It still was nature kind of dictating the show and survival more or less the theme. I didn`t realise I had chosen the ways of being to have my needs met. I just did what I did. Random.

I invented being kind and extra helpful and cheerful at home to have my mothers attention. I wanted to be loved as much as my brother. So I became the perfect son at home.

At the same time I invented being a pain in the ass at school. 

It probably frustrated me that I thought I wasn`t good enough. So I demanded attention. And I got it. 

I smiled, laughed and talked the teacher into loving me. And it drove the kindergarten teacher crazy.  She couldn`t get mad at me, because I was being so nice...

The one in first grade could, however. I think she saw right through me and didn't like my behaviour. 

I was being nice in order to get something. And with her, I didnt get it. And again, I felt not good enough.

With every painful occasion after the ice cream incident, I added something to the story about my not being good enough.  

Imagine discovering around the age of 14 having sexual feelings for men instead of women?

That really closed the door for any authentic way of being. I had to pretend I was something else than what I was.

With every new chapter of my story I invented inauthentic ways of being, to hide and cover up my imagined incompletions. My supply of inauthentic ways of being grew. 

Inauthentic ways of being. Invented in a split second. They work at that moment. To get something, to hide something. But deep inside, they leave you unfulfilled. Deep inside, you know something is wrong. And the ways of being you invented in your early early life are so familiair, you think it is you...

I pretended to be all or nothing. Whatever the situation demanded.
I became a great actor and developed a skill for adapting my being to the needs of the other one.

 I just didn`t realise that I had chosen those other ways of being to hide and compensate for defects made-up by myself.

And hence I never felt complete or fullfilled. I knew I was pretending. My truth was that I was nothing. And I was hiding it. 

No value. Worthless.

My ways of being were invented to hide my broken self. Which of course wasn`t really broken.
I just had told myself it was broken.
It had been broken almost as long as I remembered.
The story of not being good enough was my reality even before I was aware of any other reality.

I was pretending to be something, while I was pretending I wasn`t pretending.
I was hiding who I was. 

I didn`t even know or remember who I was,  

But I was sure something was wrong. And I wasn`t good enough.
So, it wasn't weird that I got stuck and felt unhappy and not belonging.

I felt guilty and ashamed and I didn`t know what it was about.
Although I found my reasons along the way why I had to be ashamed. Because you find what you look for.

The meaning making, story inventing machine in my head had invented a huge story about me not being good enough and why I wasn`t good enough. I had listened to my story like it was the truth.,

I had identified with my inauthentic ways of being and I believed my self created story about me. I held on to it.

I had gathered lots of evidence to proof that it was the truth. 

I was right about my being not good enough! Well great! 

Great to be right!

My being right about that story made me suffer for over thirty years. Unbelievable!

Until I participated in the Landmark Forum in 1998.

It was quite something to see that I  created the whole story myself. It was even a struggle to let it go. Letting go of something you believed in for over 30 years! Admitting I was wrong all the time? Oof!

But I finally did. 

I got that I could leave everything that had happenend in my life behind. I could start all over.

I saw the whole untrue story from the beginning. For the first time in long I felt good enough and complete.

There, in that course, I finally could put my past back to where it belonged: in the past. Stories from my past.
No more restraints of the past over my future.
No more restraints at all!
An open future in which everything was possible, that had been possible when I was born.

I walked out of that course being totally free to be who I wanted to be.
I felt whole and complete again and from that moment on anything was possible in my new found freedom and future.
I left behind my old reality. And I left behind the conversation of being good or bad and being right or wrong.

I was born into this old reality and conversation. I  never knew another reality was an option.

Now I saw what I wanted. 

I started thinking about a world that works for everybody.
A world without judging, condemning or blaming.

A new reality. A new conversation: A conversation about if things work or not.

If it works? Good. I`ll do more.
If it doesn`t work? I Stop.

And I`ll keep on looking till I find something that does works.
Without blaming or judging or condemning what didn`t work before. It just didn't work.

Is this new reality possible?
I think it is possible.
I know it is possible.

A new dawn, a new day.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy.

Not on fighting the old. But on building the new.

    -Socrates-

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