Filed under: Life
I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything.
He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life.
He said, “People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let’s look at a few examples.”
He drew an empty grid on the board, like this:
Time moves from left to right. Happiness from bottom to top.
He said, “Let’s look at a very common story arc. The story of Cinderella.”
It starts with her awful life with evil stepsisters, scrubbing the fireplace. Then she get an invitation to the ball! Things look up. Then the fairy godmother makes her a dress and a coach. Even better! Then she goes to the ball, and dances with the prince! This is great! But then it’s midnight. She has to go. Oh no. Sadness. Back to her humdrum life scrubbing the fireplace. But it’s not as bad as before, because she’s had this encouraging experience. Then, the prince finds her, and the happiness factor is off the chart! Happily ever after.
“People LOVE that story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.”
He wiped the board clean and said, “Now let’s look at another popular story arc: the disaster.”
It’s an ordinary day in an ordinary town. But something horrible happens! A child falls down a well! The whole town gathers to save her. Old grudges surface, but are belittled in the light of this tragedy. Rifts are bonded as people work together. The child is saved, and all is well. But notice it’s a little better than it was before, now that this incident has brought them all closer together.
“People LOVE that story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.”
But the problem is, life is really like this…
Our lives drifts along with normal things happening. Some ups, some downs, but nothing to go down in history about. Nothing so fantastic or terrible that it’ll be told for a thousand years.
“But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think are lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”
That’s why people invent fights. That’s why we’re drawn to sports. That’s why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.
We’re trying to make our life into a fairy tale.
(via http://sivers.org/drama)
Filed under: Life, The Unexplainable Things that Seem to Only Occur to Me
Just in case you’re concerned that I’ve gone all Hello Kitty on everyone – I’ll be fine. I’ve just decided it’s time to socially hibernate and crawl under a rock once again.
I really don’t feel like I’m in any mood beyond occasional interweb-speaking – especially not for getting inebriated and engaging in petty small talk. I’ll just be home reading and writing, spending too much time on the internet and watching too much telly, and possibly coming up with some sort of unrealistic 6 month goal of getting my life back on track e.g. finding myself through sobriety, vegetarianism and other fluffy overly-idealistic actions.
The good news is I’d probably go a little crazy with the online updates.
Don’t worry, it’s a yearly ritual I’ve gone through ever since I turned twelve (that’s right, last month) The kids will be alright.
