Hold Space, Not Stories

For some folks, life becomes a spectator event. Grueling dramas grip them and they spend their energy creating and projecting stories about these events. They don't even have to play a role in their stories, though the favored default role is that of victim, however that connects them to the story in front of them.

Their energy is all out there. They are nowhere to be found in themselves.

It's easier that way.

What is it like to be on the other side of that dynamic? To be under the spotlight of their relentless examination - and amplification? To be held accountable for living into their expectations of some undefined plot line? To be stripped of personal identity and scolded for what they have defined you to be?

It's awful.

Stories can help us integrate different information into familiar patterns. As we learn and grow, our stories are meant to mature and expand, as we come to understand that the world is a very diverse place.

Stories are not meant to be rigid containers that every unknown must be stuffed into. Restrain the unknown! Shove it into a small, safe box and then make judgments about it when the contents don't fit!! Chop off bits until it's all crammed in there - then you don't have to think about it, just label it.

We're not obliged to integrate every unknown thing in front of us. That's what our higher order processing centers decide on, based on memory and value systems. Sometimes we gaze at the unknown and let it go. But when we have to interact with a strange beast, say, at work, then we must come to some field of neutral agreement and find the interactive path that works. Without demanding that the unknown change to fit our myopia.

To do so, the storyteller must be present in themselves, know their own stories and how they engage the world from that core. Then a space is created for something new to evolve, for learning and growth to occur.

It's scary when you don't know your own self. Or inhabit your own stories.

And from the other side, encountering this thrashing tantrum of projection, the task is how to hold your own space, hold that projection at bay, and not engage the fabrication.

Which usually provokes a greater tantrum and outlandish accusations.

Can you see how this takes everyone away from the task at hand and into counterproductive drama?

It is a heavy weight to bear, that of projected stories. How much healthier it would be to hold space: space for individuals to land in themselves, space for projected nonsense to just spin its wheels in its own vortex of confusion, space for the authentic individual trying to dodge the nonsense.

Space for authentic interaction.

Which heals the world.

Next time, whether you are the storyteller or the storycatcher, step aside for a moment to imagine holding space, and let the stories go.