Rewriting Our Life Stories

This from the 1984 film, The Natural:

         Iris: You know, I believe we have two lives.

         Roy: What do you mean?

         Iris: The life we learn with and the life we live with after that.

And this from David Brooks’ recent column in the New York Times:

         “I believe most of us tell a story about our lives and then come to live within that story. You can’t know who you are unless you know how to tell a coherent story about yourself. You can know what to do next only if you know what story you are a part of. “A man is always a teller of tales,” the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed. “He lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them, and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.”[i]

         When I was young, I imagined my life story would be a hero’s tale.  I was going to play shortstop for the Dodgers. After watching Star Trek episodes, I decided I’d be an astrophysicist. Later I knew I was destined to be a successful lawyer in San Francisco. 

         I loved sports but my career peaked in Little League.

         I loved the idea of being a space scientist but wasn’t good enough at math.

         I did do a year of law school.  Meanwhile, I fell in love, took a leave of absence, got married, became a father, had a spiritual awakening, and went in a career direction I would have never imagined.

         Life happens.

         I certainly have had some successes along the way.  I have also learned I could overestimate my abilities.  I learned that some experiences in life can almost break you.  I learned that some of life’s blessings must be gained through hard work, discipline and endurance.  At the same time, unearned and unexpected blessings can come out of the blue and become signs of grace.

         I have often thought of what Iris said: “We have two lives…the life we learn with and the life we live with after that.” 

         For years I’ve been privileged to listen to people share at what point they recognized that the heroic, storybook lives they envisioned when they were younger were no longer valid, and how they have been rewriting their life story ever since.  

         I have heard David Brooks speak about his own two-lives journey. In his 50s, he was at the peak of his professional career in journalism.  He had power and influence. But he went through a divorce and found himself feeling lost and empty.  He realized the life of the rich and powerful in New York and D.C., which had seemed so exciting for so long, now seemed empty and dull.  He began seeking a new direction and new narrative for his life story. He started going to small towns and neighborhoods throughout America, looking for people who have found meaning in life.  He met such people from all walks of life and all kinds of neighborhoods.  Their lives were modest by the standards of the rich and powerful. But these people had a humility that gave them a sense of peace. They had also found ways to serve other people – troubled teens, children caught in rough neighborhoods, and isolated neighbors.  He discovered these people have an inner light, something he did not have.  His “second life” began.

         Life keeps going and our stories keep evolving.

          When we are composing our life stories, we may be tempted to go back and erase what’s happened to us.  But there’s no “delete” key for our past.  We can, however, decide how to incorporate our past into the story we are creating every day.

         The Natural begins with Roy and Iris as naïve teenagers in Nebraska who expect to marry after he begins his baseball career.  He leaves for Chicago for his big chance.  But he misjudges the intentions of a woman on a train and never makes it to the tryout. Roy and Iris lose contact.  Years later they find each other.  He has returned to baseball for one last chance and becomes a star. She is a single mom.  The “two-lives’ conversation takes place in a hospital room where Roy is recovering from an injury, hoping to be strong enough to play in one last playoff game.  As it turns out, Roy does play and has his moment of glory. They reunite and return to Nebraska to raise their son and live happily ever after. 

         Some peoples’ stories turn out like that.  But often our lives become something more complicated, and don’t fit the pattern of story-book endings.  Instead, they become stories that are far richer.

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[i] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/opinion/elon-musk-ambition.html

Lead image courtesy of originalfilmart.com

The scene can be viewed at https://youtu.be/2UpNJlx0EF0?feature=shared.

David Brooks created “Weavers,” a nonprofit dedicated to sharing the stories of the people who are living the kind of lives that inspired him:  https://weavers.org