What are the inherited stories that have most affected your life?
Maybe they’re big, cultural stories about how people like you are supposed to be, whether due to race or gender or class or orientation or ability, or what you get to have. Maybe it’s an old, family story generations in the making about what “we So-and-So’s” are like— how we behave, what we do for a living, what our status is in the world.
Maybe it’s not even a conscious story that gets told around the dinner table or enforced through expressed rules and expectations. Maybe it’s just a secret rule book kind of situation that no one ever, ever talks about or acknowledges but in so many ways pressure is applied to ensure that everyone gets with the program.
We are a social species, ultimately. Explicit and implicit rules of the tribe, whether the tribe fits in our house, packs our house of worship, or occupies our state, are central to how we find belonging, connection, and place. If we adhere to the rules then we are held within the arms of our tribe. Depending on the rule, being held may feel like a warm hug or a straightjacket, but it’s holding all the same. We are contained and tethered. Expectations and boundaries are known. Who we are and who we get to be are clear.
We are wired to fear exile when we don’t follow the rules. Sometimes those fears are overblown. Our people are more flexible than we imagined, more willing to change and adapt, and we can carve out a different space for ourselves. Sometimes, though, breaking the tribal rules does involve banishment of one sort or another, and there are few things that can be more heartbreaking and liberating all at the same time.
I don’t expect that wrestling with inherited stories is part of everyone’s integrity work, but it’s certainly been part of mine. Stories about the roles of women— how to be a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a sister— have chafed in various ways. Figuring out what parts of those stories suit me, which I have to discard, or whether the whole story just needs to go has been a lifelong journey of discernment. Stories about addiction, which are ultimately stories about trauma and disconnection, how we handle difficult emotions, and how we make space for ecstatic experience, are also family stories I have grappled with all my life.
I have felt exiled, flung out into an unknown world with no map to guide me, over and over again. I don’t recommend it, and yet, I wouldn’t trade it now, either the loneliness or the heartbreak. Asserting my right to craft my own story, even when doing so has led to painful consequences, is not on my list of regrets. If the Buddhists are right about life being suffering, which they seem to be, then I will always choose to suffer in order to be more in my integrity rather than suffering its loss.
I saw the most amazing movie last night— Everything, Everywhere, All At Once— in which an aging, immigrant, Asian woman becomes an unwitting superhero who saves the multiverse. It definitely wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s utterly wacky, hilarious, risqué, and also violent, though it’s campy, Kung Fu-movie violence, for what it’s worth. It’s also, for all of the weird, action-packed fun, a deeply moving and existential film about family, self-love, and mercy.
One of the central struggles of the main character, Evelyn, concerns whether or not she will repeat the family story and exile her daughter for not being what she expected, as she herself was exiled. She feels the full force of tribal expectations, both in how they constrict her and how she then reflexively constricts others in turn. She is surrounded by family, and yet she feels utterly lost and isolated. How many of us can relate to that experience in one way or another?
It’s a rare treat to sit in a theater that is full of loud hilarity one moment and then tears the next. The full range of human emotions was served up without anyone feeling pandered to or manipulated. Instead, the whole theater was simply full of recognition and delight. If you have a chance, I highly recommend you see this irreverent, mind-bending, brilliant film.
I woke in the night thinking about the movie and found I had received this newsletter from a friend, Tina Rowley: Weekly Zephyr #115: The Wind and The Wax. In it, she talks about an epic writing project she’s in the midst of. She’s been stuck recently, really, deeply stuck, and then she had this epiphany: “What if we do not have to be good. What if we do not have to do penance. Let’s not and say we did.”
Lying there in my bed alone, in the house I’ve claimed as my own with full rights to share (or not) as suits me, I thought, yes! Exactly so. What if we don’t have to suffer “to be good”, to do what’s expected of us by other people? What if we just have to be our particular selves? Maybe that’s where all the true love and freedom and creativity lies?
Again, Substack is being buggy, so I can’t seem to get the link to Tina’s wonderful newsletter embedded prettily. But, the link is there in red above. Please follow it and check out her beautiful writing. Then receive the official permission that she offers, to start over in a more fun way. Every day we get another chance.
A final bit of housekeeping… Having reached the ripe, old age of 50, Monday I have my first colonoscopy. Given that I have paying work to do tomorrow, prep for the procedure on Sunday, and then the procedure on Monday, I’m going to give myself a very rare day off from the newsletter. I’ll be back with you, and all of the free subscribers as well, next Friday, April 30th.
Have a good week, my friends. Tell some new stories.
I really loved the film, too! And what you wrote about not having to be good reminds me of Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.