Why do we think everyone else’s life (and therefore, story) is more exciting, hot, popular, interesting, dynamic, or important than our own? Our life’s story ”“ our autobiography ”“ is everything we are pulling from on a day-to-day basis consciously, and unconsciously. It often drives us, creates habits, evokes fears and desires, creates our temperament and work ethic. It makes us fight against ourselves and yet it also makes us simply a fighter. A survivor.
If you’re a survivor, you have a story.
So why is it we don’t give ourselves credit for the amazing lives we’re living? This doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes. Or lose our temper. Or become impatient. Or feel we can do better next time. Having a story worth telling doesn’t mean telling the perfect story. The perfect, airbrushed, sanitized, Rated-G version of you. It’s telling the entire story of you, which is the real story.
I recently had a student who expressed her desire to only tell “nice” stories. Stories of characters who are uplifting and sweet and wholesome. Devoid of darkness or struggle or strife. That’s great. Especially if you live your life in a kid’s cartoon.
I’m not sure A) Those stories exist. B) They’re really worth telling.
Because they’re not the truth.
To be an actor is to represent all of humanity. And all of humanity, like the world itself, is made up of light and shadow. It’s physics. To leave those chapters out of your book is ”¦ well ”¦ an unfinished book.
Leave out the dark chapters and we wouldn’t have had the stories of Frodo or Luke Skywalker or Erin Brockovich or Stanley Kowalski, Captain Jack Sparrow, Norma Rae, Rocky Balboa, Margo Channing, Ratzo Rizzo or any of the other thousands of characters who have inspired us because of what they overcame to get to light.
“Run to the light Carol Anne!” (You millennials ”“ look it up ”“ from Poltergeist).
You reflect the light by moving through the dark shit. Surviving it. Consecrating our suffering and fears. Using our struggles and challenges as tools to refine us, soften us, to remove our impurities.
”˜”˜The shadow,’’ wrote Carl Jung in 1963, “is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors and so comprise the whole historical aspect of the unconscious.”
Most of the time we deny our shadow, unconsciously casting it onto others so as to avoid confronting it in ourselves. “He’s an asshole.” “She’s a bitch.” Such projections of the shadow become magnified by groups, cults, religions, and entire countries, leading to conflicts or wars in which the “enemy” is dehumanized and demonized.
We are seeing the ramifications of this everywhere right now with the xenophobia that’s sweeping across not only the U.S. but Europe as well.
But what Jung was saying about the shadow self ”“ is not to be taken literally but rather allegorically. Like all myth ”“ and from which all great storytelling comes ”“ it is not an evil entity existing apart from us. It is not out there. It is a universal archetype that is part of the human condition. For each of us, it is part of our psyche.
How we choose to deal with it consciously ”“ or unconsciously ”“ becomes the major story line of our lives. It’s our story! If it is ignored it can defeat us and keep us from living a fully expressed, conscious life. But if we are given the tools to examine it and understand it, it can become a creative force that produces some of the most beautiful expressions of humanity ever.
All great artistic works emanate from this creative insight. To take our shadow parts, to learn from them, accept them, transform them and allow them to be what they are in a nonjudgmental way ”“ a natural, life-giving, creative potential that is inherent to the human condition and part of our specific narrative is what allows our stories to be universal.
So, see, your story matters. And that’s a story worth telling, don’t you think?