A Storied Life

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?" 
 - from the movie "You've Got Mail", spoken by the character Kathleen Kelly 



I've been thinking about how books and stories - read or told or seen - can have such a lasting impact on each of our lives. There's a quote I heard recently which goes, "Live a storied life." I love this. I often think about the line from the movie "You've Got Mail", quoted above, where the protagonist is musing about her life. I feel similarly often, I must confess. I have this great, rising desire to be brave, and this fear that when faced with a situation in which I need to be, I won't. I have daydreams about various situations and what I'll say and do, how I'll stand strong yet I wonder if instead of fight I'll flee or freeze.

With life in general, I know - in the midst of daily concerns and distresses - my life is greatly blessed, and am I thankful. It is a good life, even if I'm not famous or published or creative on a grand scale. I have work which gives purpose, and I have a slew of loving friends and family members. If I die I would be missed, yet to be a parent or to have work or art which is out in the world is to have an immediate legacy. Maybe this is why I write more and more, both out of joy and urgency, because I know in my heart that even if I'm living a small life, it is a deeply storied one, and if not to show that to anyone else then it is simply to show myself.

I heard the "storied life" quote on The Moth Podcast. The Moth has live shows all over the world. They have Main Stage events with a lineup of storytellers - authors, actors, or people they've met over time and know to have good stories - who share prepared stories to a rapt audience. The other Moth event is their Story Slam, where audience members put their names in a drawing to be randomly selected; when chosen, the participant has ten minutes to tell a story on stage (and it must go along with the predetermined Theme Of The Night). I attended my first Moth event in Austin last year with three of my siblings. Mistakenly, I thought it was an audience participation Story Slam, so I prepared a story and planned to put my name in the drawing. Even though I was wrong, and initially felt disappointed, the work of writing the story and practicing telling it under ten minutes felt meaningful. It's inspired me to write out more tales in story/essay/chapter form. Part of an eventual book, perhaps. For now, my own personal storied-life series.

Another quote I love: "We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?" (from Doctor Who, the 11th Doctor). You know, everything which has ever happened to us lives only in our memories. One day that's all we will each be: lives still existing on this earth merely through the memories of others, no matter what we accomplish. Who we are will become who we were to other people.

In the comic and movie "V For Vendetta", the character Evey explains how many people will remember the man known as V for what he did, but she will remember the man. The man who freed her, personally, aside from the scores of people he freed by starting a revolution and giving them the courage to stand up and fight. The man she loved. Although many people would remember him for many years to come, she would know him, the heart of his story: not just what he did but why he did it and who he was behind the iconic mask.

Those are some of the stories which have stayed with me, influencing and effecting me, making me want to be brave and free and alive. We're all stories, whether small or grand. We were meant to live storied lives, and to share those stories with a passion. Tell them, write them, seek them out and embrace them. May we live them out, and may they live in memory ever after.