My Story

1

A long time ago, I had a creative urge to write a story. Simple concept sure, many people have done it but I had little idea on what to write about nor how to go about it. I had great ideas having just read a book too many of the Russian greats but great ideas don't amount to much if you can't articulate your thoughts onto the written page.

I also had ego on my side. Nary a written has gotten by without it perhaps, but not being a writing I wasn't sure this was enough. Sure, my ego told me, anyone could write a book and you are surely greater than anyone so you must be able to write a book. Infallible logic if you ask me.

Next perhaps was the tools. Gone are the days a budding writer would have nothing but a pencil and paper, or perhaps an ancient type writer to slow down their thoughts. In the modern age we have computers and they allow the creative process to plough ahead at a speed greater than any one can think.

Of course that leads to anther problem one that I hadn't considered. If one tries to sit down at a computer and merely type what comes to his mind, I believe you will end up with a good deal of nothing. Gibberish you might say, as all you would be recording is your internal monologue and I can say there's a reason it's internal.

No one really wants to hear what goes on inside your head. Nor my head for that matter.

So far I have an idea, ego and the tools with which to create a great novel but I still had no idea about what to write. Sure, technically, anyone can write a book. Plenty of people do and I'm sure there's many an author who's written a single book, ticked it off their list and been happy to move on. Was that what I was trying to do here?

Surely there's more to writing a book than a case of stroking the ego. Really, why was I even trying to do this? I couldn't answer that question at the time so I merely ignored it and carried on with the project.

I would indeed get flashes of inspiration that led me to believe that it could be really that easy. I would start writing and get a few paragraphs in and think, but now what. How did one get from that flash of an idea to something much greater, a good story?

Was I kidding myself, I mean really? I guess to write a book you have to have some innate ability to tell a story. To make stuff up to draw people in. The guts of the story should just leap from the page right?

So why were the classes on writing, teaching people how to write? Was it because they couldn't articulate, or was it because my assumption that anyone could write was actually quite flawed?

I have to take a minute here to explain myself. I have long believed that anyone is capable of anything given the right stimulus and that innate ability at something just means that less stimulus is required. What stimulus is available determines what we make of ourselves. I have also long believed that am an example of that theory, believing that I could certainly pull off any human endeavour if I were given sufficient stimulus. Sounds easy right? Or perhaps ridiculous?

The question that I came to realize was two. Firstly, I came to realize that I was certainly naive about people. If you reword stimulation as motivation then yes surely you can motivate people to do just about anything. I guess on one hand you could hold a gun to someones head and tell them to write a book. Sure they will give it a go but that doesn't mean that it will be a great book or even a book that you could understand and take something away from. So I had to conclude that no, motivation wasn't sufficient to achieving your life's ambitions.

The second thing I came to realize was that I wasn't the perfect example of this theory. Certainly I could pull of a great many things but some things continued to elude me and I had to conclude that it wasn't always a lack of motivation that was the restriction.

So back to  the story of the book. Given that I had now concluded that I wasn't lacking in motivation or that I didn't have the innate ability, I had to think hard about whether I was understanding myself properly.

Why did I want to write this book? Just to prove that I could? To understand my creative side better? Or to prove to myself that I was capable of anything I had motivation to pull off and to prove to myself that my theory about people is true, that anyone can achieve anything given sufficient motivation?

So here I am thinking about writing a book to prove myself right on a theory that the world is wholly ignorant of (though perhaps it's already been done before) and which perhaps will have not benefit to anyone?

Again you ask, why bother?

Let me tell you a story then and perhaps you will understand my source of motivation. Well I was a much smaller person attending primary school, I had no less ego than I have today. I was scholastically lazy compared to my school mates and thus was variously bored at the whole process. During this time, I was set a creative writing assignment which I duly competed. After the teacher had marked all of the classes entries, he announced in front of the whole class that one students work was so good that he wanted to read it in front of the whole class.

Can you imagine? I was bored but not that bored that didn't pay attention at this point. So the teacher read out my assignment, his only comment was that it was incomplete. The story didn't finish but started beautifully.

Are you starting to understand? Here was a story that I had written with no particular purpose other  than to forfil the teachers requirements yet he found it sufficiently good to read to the whole class. I hadn't really thought before then about writing but as you can see it's an idea that has stuck with me ever since.

Later on during high school a similar situation unfolded. During an English assignment in year 10 I wrote something for a creative writing assignment. In this class you had the students that routinely did well and I was certainly not one of those. So you might imagine my surprise when our work was returned to us that the teacher had marked my work above everyone else in the class. Despite my earlier brush with success I hadn't thought about writing much since. This was a reminder that perhaps I did have some innate ability to write and perhaps I had something that some people would making a living from.

OK, enough background. Fast forward to the almost present and you find me attempting to write story after story. What happened?

As you may see, even though my teachers thought I had potential, what ever that may mean, I only ever started a story. I didn't really finish anything. I couldn't create that story arc that so defines the great stories of our time.

Yet the fact that I can now talk about story arcs shows you something of what I've learnt.

The fact that I am indeed not an author also says that I haven't not learn enough.

2

So, if you have managed to get this far then well done. I don't always stay on track and I write off the cuff so I haven't really planned this out but hopefully you will stay along for the journey if you find it interesting enough.

Many things in life we do because we think we should not necessarily because we actual want to. We get married because that is what is expected of us. Not many of us really know what it will be like getting married and perhaps if we did we never would. Similarly we have kids because we are expected too. Perhaps we also know that deep down that we do want kids no matter how horrible other people might make it seem.

I also had things that I did because that was what was expected of me. Take university for instance. Everyone wants to go there right? I would suggest that not many high school aged people actually know what they want to do with their lives. That's understandable, it's a very hard question to answer. How do you decide what to do with your life? What things do you value enough to dedicate your life to? You hear all the time about people who have made some discovery or scientific breakthrough after spending 20 years of the life dedicated to it. At high school, what student is passionate about something enough to want to dedicate their life to it? I can't think of one. Sure you have females who will say that want to be a mother and that will be their life. But really, that's a bit old school. In this day and age, its not enough to say your a house wife and a mother.

So when I was at school I was not really thinking the long term career that people eventually settle in to. I was thinking of the here and now. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to go to the conservatory of music and study music. That was about the only thing that I was passionate about. As you can probably guess, that is not what happened. I was talked around to going to university which I did. I failed at that. You could say that my heart not was in it. It took me 14 years to get my degree because I didn't really know why I was there. I didn't really like computers. Sure I could understand them but remember that I thought everyone could understand them given the right motivation. Certainly there wasn't a great deal of motivation whilst I was at uni by anyone.

So even after I had flunked out of uni I was still trying to pursue my musical career though this time with a different angle. I would study to be a sound engineer. This at least was a more certain way to earn a living. I enrolled into a college and begin what I thought would be my new career. I met many people with the same goal, trying to make it in the music industry. Yet I also manage to fail at that too. Running out of money isn't the same as flunking out of uni but perhaps you might say that something was missing.

Can you see a pattern here?

I've heard it said that a man is defined by his actions. But how do you define a man who's actions are defined by others? It seems to me that in that sense, society defines the man and man merely goes along with what society expects of him. Those that don't live on the fringe and are shunned. Life is hard for them.

Perhaps you think this is a bit of a cop out. We have free will, I have free will, we should be able to say we are defined by our actions and we are merely being sensible by allowing societies morals to direct us. If we didn't want to live within societ then we would be living in isolation away from all the things that society grants us. Yet, if we disagree with society or perhaps it's implied morals what power do we have to fix things? How do we change the way society thinks about life and the direciton it's leading us in?

Perhaps you could write a book?

I think that's a great answer. We could write a book about all the things that are wrong with society and perhaps people will read it and change their thinking? I don't think the world works like that.

I will elaborate here. Obviously, there's isn't some gigantic committe called social morals or "What you should really do with your life" that creates guildelines for everyone to follow. So how do we feel these directions that are imposed on us by society? How did I feel compelled to do things that I didn't want to do?

That is a hard question to answer but one I think worth looking in to.

When I think about how I am influenced by those around me I find my thinking often goes like this:

1) Imagine what that person will say about your behaviour
2) Change your behaviour to reduce any negative comments your percieve will come your way.

See the issue here? I am modifying my behaviour on what I imagine those around me (or indeed society at large) will say or how they will react to me.

Sure, not everyone will think like this, but perhaps those that wish to fit in and not rock the boat will find themselves thinking along these lines. It's almost a nice little algorithm, refine your behaviour to that wish pleases most people. It could be seen as the opposite of self-serving. If you wanted to imagine society as a sea on which we sink or swim, then this thinking could be seen as simply floating around, trying not to create any waves as we sit calmly in the boat.

Not very exciting and a not very good way of changing society, then again how does one move an ocean?

Yet this is how people think, I'm almost sure of it. At least some people, with certain personality types. Like me.

Is this a bad thing. Does it help you write a book? Would the resulting book be no better than a bunch of platitudes with nothing to challenge anyone. I think we need to dig deeper.

3

When I was growing up, I lived in a house hold with four females and then me and my dad. That's a lot of potential conflict. During times of agitation, my father would play the role of peace keeper. He demonstrated that one solution to conflict was to diffuse the situation. At least that is what I got from it at the time. I don't seem to remember if the conflict was every actually resolved, just that the immediate action taken was to diffuse things and to keep the peace.

My thinking has been based around that though I do now try to resolve the conflict as well as diffuse the tempers. What does that say about me? Again we come back to the opposite of self-serving. A result of this role model was my stance as a pacifist. I don't believe in violence of any sort and abhor people who do. I can't understand people who advocate violence as a means to anything. It only servces to prove who is the most brutal.

I can perhaps draw you to a conclusion we can make here. Those that have role models who solve their conflict with violence will likely have that on their list of coping mechanisms. I'm not about to say that will be their only method but as you can imagine, I don't have it there at all.

So you can perhaps begin to see that , keeping the peace started with my father and my sisters and now I extend it to all my human relationships.

When I got married I was so worried about offending my in-laws that I am sure I came off as rather timid at first. Even to this day I am very respectful of them and wouldn't wish to do anything to offend them despite having been married for a good few years.

Keep the largest number of people happy. It's a good rule but it comes with some limitations.

Yes, before I go on, I'm not a one dimensional creature, nor are you but for now lets just pretend.

So what are the limitations to this keeping the peace mentality?

I guess the biggest one is an inability to leap into the unknown? Nah, that's not right. It's more that you are restrained by the percieved potential offence of those around you. This ends up dictating your behaviour in many situations. There's no pushing the boundries here but instead trying hard not to offend those around you. It makes it hard to be bold and yet sometimes being bold is required.