How many times did you hear someone saying their life should be a novel? I should write it down one day, they tell you. You can only nod, maybe smile, as you cannot tell them it wouldn’t be much of a novel. A novella at best, but in far too many cases a life could fit in a short story, as there’s only so much you can write about standard lives spent in tedious jobs and conventional marriages.
Yet, everyone is entitled to their own novel, as this is how it feels to them. As Jung used to say, people need meaning in their lives and each one of us finds meaning in what we believe to be our life story.
Growing older, I increasingly tend to look at people in terms of the story they tell. It’s only natural since people my generation have pretty much written their story. The final chapters still missing can easily be figured out. They say you can change and rewrite your story at any point. It’s never too late. I doubt that. Those who manage to do that are the exception rather than the rule.
How many happy stories do you see around you? By happy I mean a story where the protagonist has few regrets and are more or less satisfied with their life. Of those who pretend to be content, how many are lying to themselves?
Think about the people you’ve known since they were young, full of dreams and the potential for true happiness. The romantic friend whose sensitive soul was squashed by decades of corporate drudgery. The girl with artistic hopes who never got to follow her passion. The smart guy whose extensive knowledge only led him to search for meaning at the bottom of a bottle. The woman who never found the courage to make a leap and plunge into the river of life, choosing to walk on the safe shore just watching the others sink or swim. Or - and I’m sure you know many of them - the men and women who were sold to the idea that the meaning of life is to have rather than be.
Years ago, when I was juggling a career and raising a child I was too tired to watch a whole movie at night. I’d set the timer to turn the TV off in one hour but usually drifted to sleep much sooner. I only got to watch part of the story and I never found it frustrating. That’s how it is, we only get to know the end of a small number of stories.
We are not supposed to know how our children’s stories unfold. Best you can do is hope they’ll end up with few regrets in their old age.
Then there are stories you wish you never knew the end. The lives you feel deserved at least a few more chapters if not a couple of volumes. The lives you’re glad you won’t see the end as you know where the plot is going and it’s not somewhere nice. And, yes, the lives where a surprising turn of events saves the protagonist who gets to become,as they say, the best version of themselves. I would love to watch such an unexpected plot twist. Which somehow brings us to the question of afterlife and the possibility of keeping an eye on the people in your former life.
As I was saying I’m perfectly happy with not knowing how stories end and I’d rather have more enlightening experiences in whatever afterlife there is.
Speaking of afterlife, we’ll always have George Carlin’s take on it. If I’m not mistaken, we watched this or maybe a similar Carlin piece after my mother died. She also used to say her life would make for a great novel and for her it did. It was her story.
Thanks for reading
All images are mine, taken at the Toy Museum in Basel