Hello, my friends.
Avid readers read because they get to inhabit the mind of someone who creates differently than themselves. Or, they get to get inside of the narrative that powered some of the greatest brains in the world. To read Sun Tzu's The Art of War is to find application for those principles and strategies in our own lives, though they were actually written hundreds of years ago.
To read or understand Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is to question whether we are the benevolent Bishop, the protagonist, Jean Valjean. or the relentless pursuer, Inspector Javert, who ended up taking his own life because he was more interested in his own triumph than in mercy, and it didn't work out the way he hoped.
Stories are so powerful that families, organizations, even entire societies, can be influenced by them for good or bad. Facts are facts. But stories can be used to change the interpretation of those facts so dramatically that entire civilizations are affected. Groupthink is real. And groupthink most often happens as a reaction to stories.
Have any of you read The Boys in the Boat? If not, I absolutely recommend that you read it. The movie's great. The book's better, and far more comprehensive in its scope. The creepiest part of that whole book to me, and this is a little bit of a spoiler alert, was reading the section that describes Joe Rance, one of the members of the American rowing team that was there to compete in the Berlin Olympics, as he walked through the streets of Berlin, festooned with decorations, perfectly clean, everybody smiling and waving, cute little shops here and there, well stocked, with smiling proprietors inviting him in. And then, the author mentions that what Joe could not see was the blood that would cover those floors in just a few weeks as the Jews were exterminated.
What story was Adolf Hitler telling the world, or the citizens who came to observe the Olympics, and what was really going on? How were the German people being influenced by Hitler's storytelling? A story has power to do great good, or great harm. Let's look at a story that did great good.
In 1776, Thomas Payne published a pamphlet he called Common Sense. the time, George Washington's armies were suffering greatly at Valley Forge. Deserters were many. The troops were upset because they were owed a good deal of back pay. They were starving. They were cold. And some of the supplies that had been promised did not arrive, because fighting was so intense in Pennsylvania that the supply trains couldn't make it through. In the midst of all that, George Washington had Thomas Paine's pamphlet read to his troops. This is an excerpt from what was read:
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country. But he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated."
Washington's troops, inspired by what they'd heard, had their vigor and their determination renewed. Within weeks, they had fought and conquered in some of the greatest and most heroic battles of the time. It was freedom they fought for.
Let's contrast these two examples one more time. The young American rowing team at the Berlin Olympics saw something beautiful, and what was happening underneath was horrendous. And in the case of George Washington's army at Valley Forge, what they saw was something horrible, but there was something really beautiful underneath.
Every story has within it the capability to build or destroy. It behooves us, then, to think about which we are doing at any given time. And in no place is that more important than in the stories we tell to, and about, ourselves. Your stories have the capability to build or destroy. Your stories are instructions to your mind and to your heart and even to your body about how to handle the life you are currently living.
You can look for the good on the surface and decry what's underneath. Or you can look for what is good and true and powerful and noble and virtuous and honorable underneath and make it appear on the surface. Make it true that your life is a good life.
Now, that doesn't mean your life is an easy life. It doesn't mean your life is free of trial or trauma or emergency or any other bad thing. But life is, in large degree, the story we tell. How do we interpret the things that happen to us, and what do we choose to do as a result? Are we a facade masking horror, or are we determination and freedom and virtue being masked, sometimes, by snow and difficulty, but oft times wonderful relationships, great opportunities, and a grand vision for the future. You get to choose which of those is the actual version of your life.
Because stories are so powerful, they will find themselves manifest in your life. Curate them. As a hobbyist slash semi-pro photographer, depending on the month, one of the things that's most difficult for me is to curate the photos. That means go through and decide which ones I will keep and which ones I will discard. I am prone often to say, "yeah, maybe I need to hang on to that though, because what if I actually had time to edit that thing, and what if I could turn it into something, and what if I could create a book of my landscape stuff, and what if I...?" The what if's generally don't happen. Choose the best and focus on it. Make it beautiful. Display it. Put it in a place that's prominent and look at it often as evidence of God's love for you, as evidence for the opportunities of your life, as evidence that things have been good before and will be good in the future. Curate your thoughts. Discard the ones that don't serve you. Discard the ones that are just taking up space in your mind, and in your heart, and in your body. And focus on the ones that are good, and beautiful, and noble, and worth pursuing.
And then go do more of it. What we practice becomes permanent. You've heard the phrase, practice makes perfect. That's not true. Practice makes permanent. Practice those things that you want to be a permanent part of your life, of your emotions, of your relationships, of your faith, and of the good that is around you.
What you practice becomes permanent. Here's to you and your permanently good life.
We'll talk again soon.