"It is not what happens to us that has shaped us, it is the stories we tell about what happens to us that have shaped us."
So said poet Joel McKerrow this morning, to around 20 of us gathered in the old community house in West End, the house that has heard so many of our stories, so many of others' stories, over the years.
How right he was. The same truth has been stated many times in different ways by many different people: what we believe about our lives creates our reality. For the past does not in fact exist, only our memories of it - individual and collective. I have a friend who is naturally an optimist, her sister a pessimist. She says she had a wonderful childhood; her sister claims to have had a terrible childhood, yet they grew up in the same family, in more or less the same situation. The stories they tell themselves are all they have of their childhood, and both are, in a sense, right - the only childhood they have had is the childhood that exists in their memories, whether wonderful or terrible. Memory, said a friend this morning, is a creative event. We recreate the past, and every time we do so, we get further from what actually happened. This is hard-wired into us - the telling of stories, the recreation of the past - it is what we live by.
I have a chance to reflect on this every time people ask me about a significant broken relationship in my past, which they still do, now and again. But what happened? they enquire - curiously, caringly, and every shade in between. What did happen? I ask myself. Which version of the story shall I tell today? Was it emotional immaturity? Was it independence? Was it lack of commitment? Was it inability to understand? Was it that we were not right for each other? Was it that we did not love well enough? Was it that it was not meant to be? Was it the best thing? Was it was it was it? It was all of these, it was none of these, it was a thousand other things, it was none of them.
Can I choose the story that I tell? Do the more positive stories (It wasn't the right thing, at the right time) comfort me, or leave me unable to change? Do the negative stories (It would have worked, if only...) challenge me to change, or leave me depressed and regretful?
I come back to the words of Brother Roger of Taize. Why dwell on what hurts, both in ourselves and others? Yes, why indeed? If memory is always a creative event, why not choose, why not create, the best version of a story to live by?
I'm still working out how to do this.
