Giving up our Stories

The first time I heard a Buddhist teacher say that we should give up our stories, I was incensed. What was he talking about? Stories aren’t just the way I make my living, they are the way I make sense out of my life! They make meaning where otherwise there would be none. I sat in respectful silence, but all the time thinking, “If giving up stories is the price of learning mindfulness, then maybe mindfulness isn’t the answer I’m looking for!”

I went out into the night, fuming.

But as is often the case when I finally open my very western mind to these strange eastern ideas, what initially seemed counterintuitive—even infuriating—began to reveal a core of truth. For us writers, the mere word story is sacred. But all stories are not created equal. What about the endless cycling of accusation—“Why did she . . .?” and “I know he meant . . .” and “If they only cared, they would never . . .”—that jogs along in our brains day after day. These, of course, are the stories the teacher was talking about, the ones we tell ourselves, not to comprehend our humanity, but to make ourselves right.

Whew! Off the hook! He wasn’t talking about me, at least not about my work.

But . . . eventually I began to wonder. Is there any connection between the kind of self-justifying storytelling we all fall into so easily and the stories writers craft and send out into the world?  We talk about “writing from the heart,” but what does that mean? Writing what we already know is true?

My best stories aren’t the ones that give answers, the ones that support my most passionately held certainties. They are the stories that ask the hardest, most-difficult-to-entertain questions. Sometimes even questions that have no answers at all. No certain ones, anyway. And that’s true whether I’m replaying an argument I’ve just had or creating a picture-book text for three-year-olds or writing a young-adult novel. If I can get myself out of the way and let what is rising within me tell itself honestly, there is a chance my story may teach me something, not just be a mouthpiece for already established certainties.

There is even a chance I might learn from whatever story evolves.

I wrote On My Honor to ask a question, a whole series of questions really: Are we responsible for the choices others make? How do we live with the knowledge that a terrible mistake cannot be undone? What do we say to a parent who has failed us, however well intentioned the failure may have been? Is it possible, ever, to forgive ourselves? What do we do with pain that can’t be put down?

The answers, if they happen at all, occur in the readers’ hearts, not on the page.

Even a picture book can ask instead of tell, though I’m not sure I have yet created one so resonant as to do that in a substantial way. But consider some of the classics that speak to generation after generation, Where the Wild Things Are, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Ferdinand the Bull. Not an answer among them, but, oh, what deep questions they ask! And how satisfying they are to explore again and again and again.

The longer I live, the more I understand that truth doesn’t lie in the answers I carry around in my pocket, however closely they are held. Truth lies in living into the moment, the completely uncertain moment, accepting it, embracing it, honoring it and discovering what it has to give.

And that’s accurate for our stories, too. The stories we write can be used the way those self-justifying monologues inside our heads are, to keep us from knowing ourselves, to keep us from learning anything new.

Or they can be used to crack the world open . . . and ourselves, too!