Life Stories

So here we are again! Another Friday, 2 PM, and once more my work ethic has on an early sabbath. Once more, my mind is tingling with a zillion thoughts, but today I shall write about only one.

Read this article recently on a recommendation, and this line in it really caught my fancy: "We write the stories of our lives all the time with the choices we make—our decisions about how we spend our time and the things we do with it. But as we write, we need to periodically stop to read what we’re writing, to take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going."

A nice concept, and obviously a concept that cuts many ways... I looked around the web a bit more and ended up on this page on the website of the ever-unpalatable Dr Phil, and this article on a site called mindpub.com. Not surprisingly, given the nature of the idea, it is one mostly talked about by life coaches, self help gurus and their ilk. (and both sites cited belong to that clan) Then finally, my web research done, I got to original thinking...

I like the idea, and can empathize with it. While most of the time in life I have no idea what the heck I am up to, I can think back to instances in the past where I felt compelled to act a certain way because that's what I visualized/ directed myself into doing. In hindsight, these times felt very much like a method acting assignment - for instance, when I experienced my first break-up, or when I was dealing with a debilitating illness, or even when I chose my career path (or what little of it I did actively choose).

There are so many good and bad things about living that way... optimists will have good scripts to adhere to, pessimists will have bad. (As I will mention again later, agnostics are unable to have one). So let's talk about the bad things first.

The first negative is of course that if you are working off a script someone else handed to you - with or without you knowing - you may end up unhappy forever after the 'climax'. The other is that life scripts will be like unending soap operas rather than like one shot movies - you'll have to keep thinking up the next episode. The third negative is the fickleness of your own mind, or of the universe we inhabit. Chaos will intervene somewhere, and if you get too emotionally attached to a version of the script, you are ensuring your unhappiness. Finally, if sometime you override your rationality/ emotions you feel just to stick to some script, you are in deep trouble.

The good is easy - any self respecting self help guru (and they all claim to be so) will tell you that you can achieve goals once you visualize them. Oftentimes self help workshops start with the guides asking you to write your own elegy, or asking questions like "what do you want the most" and so on. Another clear positive is that you will have purpose/ meaning in life, and unless you are a serious romantic (as I am) and dreamer (ditto!) you will work toward achieving it rather than expecting it to happen all on its own.

The philosophical fallouts of the idea are also vast. First of all, having a life script implies a greater dependence of nurture rather than nature. The determinists will have a field day with it, while the libertines go boo! In fact any proponents of free will (and I am one - being a compatibilist) will be reserved about the idea. That old chicken and egg question - Is there a grand design, or am I free to make my choices? - is but a grander form of the question Do we or do we not write and follow life scripts?

A more mundane philosophical turnout regards creative folks like authors and actors and so on - I mentioned method acting before, and it kind of makes you wonder whether the urge to try out different life scripts (or even world scripts) is what attracts people to build and execute their imaginary works?

Perhaps the 'complexity of modern life' that everyone moans about is all about our life scripts getting more and more complex (and ambitious, and uncompromising) as our world shrank politically and technologically? The peasant living in rural India in the rule of the Satavahans obviously would have a simpler life script than an immigrant Indian techie living in New York City in 2007! (Or would he? hmm... maybe that's just our generational hubris)

Speaking of generations, I wonder how much the hippy movement/ flower power had to do with the baby boomer generation reacting to their parents 'laying down the law' and setting their life scripts. Much of feminism is certainly about women rebelling against their hand-me-down life scripts.

And don't even get me started on world-scripts. Seems every culture/ every religion/ every philosophy ultimately has one... they call it their creation myth and eschatology!

The damage that sticking to world scripts has caused the world is gadzookily immense... take for instance Alexander's "Domination" world script, Napoleon's "Empire" world script, or Mr Hitler's "Lebensraum" world script. (These three guys being the most readily named examples in world history - in relation to almost anything). Or take the more modern instances of the "Cold War/ American Imperialists vs Evil Empire" script everyone stuck to or the recent "Democracy as the Middle East's saviour" world script authored by Bush and Cheney :)

So anyway... returning to the less lofty realm of personal implications...

Do I really want to live with a life script? Not consciously... I'd rather take the unknown and sort of drift along and see where life takes me. At least, that has been my attitude in this past half-decade since I (in some major ways except for the literal) sobered up. Besides, having a life script presumes a value judgment of a personal 'purpose' and as an agnostic, that eludes me.

It may be a slightly 'safe' way to live - "don't have expectations so you can avoid disappointment" and all that shit - but then again, it seems like the only hassle-free way to live, doesn't it? Would it necessarily mean I cannot achieve anything in life? I don't think so. Would not having a life script mean basically being a complete wastrel? Not really. Is not having a life script a natural fallout of being an extreme agnostic? You betcha!

Uncertainty, living with zero-expectation, not having a life script... all these things seem easy. Or at least easier than planning, knowing what you want, and working to get it. But they are not! They are in fact harder, because every bit of your mind is obsessed with order, and your way of life would be chaotic if you accept this path. External factors are not much help either - your parents, your friends, society at large - they're all programming you to take the 'achievant's' path... to adopt this life script or that.

But in the end that is all BS. A life script fails on the simple fact that it is an imposition of hypothetical order on a subset of an uncertain and chaotic universe... "Know thyself" is a necessary prerequisite to "Direct thyself" and quite frankly, most of us just don't make that requirement!

Ok, enough rambling for now, methinks... out!