The Way of StoryChoices
Choices
As I daily view the news and the terrible suffering of innocents being bombed in two separate wars, I keep hearing in my memory, Joan Baez singing “When will they ever learn? When will they ev-er learn?” Then I repeat a question I have often heard others say,”If God is all powerful, why does he allow human beings to suffer?” St, Augustine discovered one answer in God’s gift of free will. Six centuries later, Shakespeare wrote, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.”
As a lay astrologer, I understand that individuals are born with certain asanas (tendencies) which may later determine our vocations and behavior. And yet unforeseen happenings occur which may seriously affect our lives – both for good and ill. Still, there is choice for many of the diverse roads we walk. Who we marry. What career we choose. Where we live. Who we choose as our closest and dearest.
At eighteen, I chose to study theology with the intent to become an educational missionary in foreign lands. At the end of my first year, after reading the great religions and western philosophies, I became an agnostic and switched schools and majors to Theatre. Choice.
I was engaged for two years to a banker’s son and yet after graduation, married a philosopher/novelist from south India. Choice.
So apparently, there is choice regardless of the collective madness of the outer world. So how to organize our minds and hearts to choose the right choice?
My second book, Heal Your Self with Writing, written after a graduate degree in Jungian psychology, is about self-healing grief and trauma as well as creating a deeper dialogue with the Self. The core theme of this book is “Our lives may be determined less by past events than by the way we choose to remember them.” Choice.
An inspiration for Heal Your Self with Writing was a Native American parable about a grandfather who says to his grandson, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful and angry; the other is loving and compassionate.” When his grandson asks which wolf will win the fight in his heart, the old man replies, “The one I feed.” Choice.
How do we learn to “feed” the stories that heal? How do we put together the pieces of our past? How can we re-vision our life story so that pain becomes meaningful and actually promotes growth and transformation? Choice again.
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