The Storyteller’s Rule | Catherine Viel

By Catherine Viel, January 10, 2022

(Golden Age of Gaia)

January 9, 2022

My grandpa I loved very much. Time was soothing then.
We didn’t really need time when days and nights were safe.
And with him they were. A healer and respected kiva elder…
And a storyteller he was…
Our history is more than here. We know more than realize.
We realize what we don’t know. Or want to know. Truths.
Stalk us, just like they found. A boy. More than fifty years ago.
~Simon J. Ortiz, Time as Memory as Story



I’m so lucky to have my limitations.

Figuring out why they’re there and how to get rid of them—or live with them—can fully occupy my entire being.

In spiritual or personal growth terms, I reckon these limitations would be labeled “challenges.” I mostly view them as annoyances, if they’re minor, or epic problems worthy of depiction in a Wagnerian opera if they greatly impact my life.

My minor inconvenience might be viewed as an enormous tragedy to someone a great deal wealthier and more privileged than I am.

And it’s possible that my gigantic problems would be par for the course to someone living in poverty, with limited access to nourishing food or healthcare. (Limited access to conventional medicine is quite possibly an advantage these days, but that’s another story.)

It seems to come down to circumstance and perspective.

*****



I have to admit that most of my challenges are likely self-imposed. Accepting the perspective that I’m a multidimensional cocreator with free will means I have a hard time blaming others for things I dislike about my life.

Well…most of the time.

Being lassoed into the worldwide suffering of increasing restrictions and an apparent march toward totalitarianism doesn’t feel like something I deliberately attracted. And it certainly isn’t something I can, as an individual, personally halt.

Despite exhortations by various commentators to get out there and join school boards and lobby City Hall, to be the change you want to see on the local level, I’m not taking that route.

Since I elect to disengage from that outer kind of activism, I’m left to maneuver my way through internal struggles and physical limitations that I perceive as extremely undesirable.

*****



I don’t know why I seem to gravitate at times toward discontent and discomfort. I swear it’s not on purpose, but I can’t have it both ways. I am either consciously (or subconsciously, which I believe is still “deliberate“) bringing events and circumstances into my life, or I am a powerless pawn on the chessboard of the Universe with no ability to affect my own life.

Even if it makes me feel somewhat inept, I will go with option number one. I do create my own life.

Many spiritual practitioners meditate. I have attempted with extremely limited success to engage in meditation for…decades. I sort of hate to admit it, but that failure probably has bearing on the perpetually simmering discomfort I experience.

Alternatively, it might have more to do with my lifelong love of stories. Fiction. Both reading it and writing it.

First rule of story: there has to be conflict or there is no story.



And since I know I’m a storyteller, perhaps conflict is what I gravitate to. Perhaps if I were willing to see life as the flow it no doubt is, to be accepting and equanimous with all that is, my life would be easier.

I wouldn’t view my limitations as such, but would truly see them as challenges to either work on and release, or accept as they are. There, problem solved.

Wow, how boring! That’s my fictionist’s first response. Not going to weave a spellbinding tale out of that whole cloth.

I could belittle myself for this perceived shallowness, or I could accept that this is how I am at this moment. Seeing stories everywhere, recording them as I’m drawn to, is the deepest and widest river of my life. And I’m not ready to climb out of it yet.

*****



If I look at being a storyteller and therefore gravitating toward conflict of one sort or another as being a limitation, I’m left with the options that I believe are how we deal with limitations. Find a way around them or through them, to somehow eliminate their negative impact on us. Or accept that it’s there to stay (at least for the moment), and learn to live with it as is.

I already know what I want to do with my self-described limitation of seeking out, or at least noticing, conflict, and reporting upon it.

And you know, too, because you wouldn’t be reading this if I didn’t accept this challenge.

The challenge to describe the story of my life and share it. However I feel, whatever I do, wherever I am.

Discontent and all. This moment on our planet does not feel like unicorns and rainbows and lollipops. When those show up, I’ll be delighted to write about them. Meantime, I will delight in sharing life as it is, around and within my personal realm. (The other first rule of storytelling is, write what you know.)

I’ll view this as an alchemy, turning the limited dross of one human life into the limitless gold of a never-ending universal tale.