Something’s going on. No one knows how to tell their story anymore. I’ve got to figure out how to help. … Conflict is the one precondition of a story. For there to be a narrative at all, something unforeseen must happen.**
Bruce Feiler

Memorisation is brittle. Metaphor scales. Metaphor helps us create the next thing and find our footing when confronted with the new.^
Seth Godin

Have we forgotten what we want to live our lives for?
It seems ridiculous.
How can we forget our lives?
And yet,
That’s what it can feel like on a daily basis,
When the noise and busyness
encircles and
overwhelms –
And there’s ever more noise and busyness:

life is filled with chaos and complexity, periods of order and disorder, linearity and nonlinearity … loops, spirals, wobbles, fractals, twists, tangles and turnabouts*.

Bruce Feiler is arguing that the linear life is gone
so welcome to the nonlinear –
no more
What is it I’m supposed to do now?
My antidote to forgetfulness
Is to imagine our lives as unfolding stories,
To be visited at the beginning of each day
(wherever possible),
Helping us to remember,
We’re wanting to bring our deepest gladness^
into the gift of a new day.

*A soundtrack for this morning’s post;
**Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions;
^Seth Godin’s blog: Circus peanuts don’t contain nuts;
^^Frederick Buechner spoke about finding our purpose where our deep gladness meets the world’s greatest need.