Hungry for Stories

I realise increasingly that I am constantly hungry for stories.

I read PostSecret religiously.  The fact that I made it to Wednesday this week before reading Sunday's secrets only indicates my baby brain has truly taken hold.  I haven't done that unless I have been truly out of e-contact... for like years.

I used to read the wedding announcements on the New York times website every Sunday before I got utterly sick of the classist perfectionism.  The snobbish money-ism. Did that increase recently or did I change? It used to be that my favourite stories were the improbable ones.  Not "she went to Harvard as did he where they met doing their PhDs in MBA blah blah", which seemed rarer, and you just know that these poor souls are striving for someone else's narrative, and measuring themselves in finite units.  I preferred the ones where he was her divorce lawyer as she tried to extricate herself from a difficult marriage.  (Actually, come to think of it, that was my great-grandparents.  Good story, but moving on.) But the ones where they were sweethearts in the forties, but fell out, but always missed each other, went on to marry other people, have a bunch of kids and really decent lives.  But when they saw each other the buffet sneeze guard, it was as if not a moment had passed...

I think that is another reason FaceBook and Pinterest are inextricable for me. Although to a lesser extent. And that's ok. Music with stories, with scenes, with original sentiments.  Cary Tennis. Pamela Stephens Connoly in the Guardian.  Heck, the whole family section of the Guardian.  Also religiously, but on Saturdays.

And I think this is a good indicator that my life's work really is to be some sort of a therapist or counsellor. I don't want to share the secrets and stories.  I just want to know that the boundaries of what people are capable of are ever-expanding with every glimpse into a story I hear.  That peoples' humanity can always surprise and impress me. That the longer I carry on in this lifetime, the less I will believe those people who set up short barriers and close-in boundaries as fact and then ask me to commiserate: "you know how it is".  Men are like this.  Kids are like that.  Work is like you-know-what.

No, actually, I really don't.  Tell me why you think that.  That is more insightful for me. 'Cause the one thing I know is asking why is one of the most natural impulses I have and it's always been that way. And you containing your life means something for you. Those are stories too.  Because it takes audacity to tell one's own story outright.  That's why PostSecret is so radical and safe.

And that's why I yearn to hear what people say behind those safe doors, with permission, in the somewhat privileged place of listener, confidant, guide, questioner. I am grateful that I know that, however "late" (to some peoples' minds) and however far off it is still will be. In the meantime, I have ye olde internet, depository for the human condition.

With a different perspective, all the time aspects of the scenario, of whatever scenario, are perfect.