It's popular today to let go of your story, or to stop your story or to rewrite your story. Yoga teachers, self-helpers, mindfulness people -- everyone, it seems, believes that our stories can hold us back from whatever our true purpose or intentions might be.
I've always felt uncomfortable with this, perhaps because I've woven a dense one. A thick story that I'm living by, a web that I've woven, sticky and strong, full of flies. Do I have to tell a different one? Is it holding me captive?
The poet Mark Nepo wrote that sharing our stories -- even over and over -- as they continue to press upon our hearts -- is sort of like chanting a mantra whose truth is, finally, released. His take on story is quite different in that it is by repetition that we find release.
I'm mulling these things as I tell my story -- here and elsewhere. The story that you know and the story that you don't know and won't know. I'm the spider and the fly.
