No Regrets Journal Essay Stories Clayton Medeiros July 2020
No Regrets, a journal of poetry, prose and images about the twists and turns in the search for love, meaning and community. Clayton Medeiros, Editor, Poet, Photographer, claymedeiros@aol.com Neil McKay (Johnny Trash), Webmaster. Submissions are by invitation of the Editor. Epublishing site with all issues of No Regrets Journal http://issuu.com/claymedeiros/docs Facebook page with No Regrets Journal, essays haikus, poems and photographs http://www.facebook.com/NoRegretsJournal
Stories “…it is through story that we make sense of our lives. We live across time…to arrive at a story we can live with…” Charles Taylor. We are the language animal. Our language gives us the ability to create and tell stories about who and and how we are. Our stories shape how we are seen by others. There are stories that accompany our national identity like George Washington owning up to chopping down the cherry tree. We tell stories about places we have lived—states, cities and neighborhoods. There are stories about organizations and groups that we belong to. Our stories provide insights in to our roles and responsibilities through our involvement with family, friends, work, play and the society at large. Story telling’s beginning is lost in our common human pre-history. Stories were created and orally passed from generation to generation. Our capacity for memory is impressive. Homer could recite the 12,000 plus lines of the Odyssey. The Greeks were worried when writing came along. They feared that it would weaken our ability to remember and to think properly. Stories remain central to our relationships with others and to the cultures of which we are a part. Stories help us to understand our own life, the life of those around us and the lives, cultures and societies different from our own. We are the only creatures that can articulate our history over time to others. It is through language we dialogue with those around us. We build a world that we share together. Our words and their commonly held meaning allow us to state factual information, share emotionally laden content and discuss aesthetic reactions to the arts and the world around us. Language is also essential in the internal monologue that we have with ourselves. We build a private world. Our stories for our audiences and for ourselves depend on the power of words. Our life is a continuing conversation. Stories are part of that conversation that shapes how we are seen by others. They are also part of a continuing conversation that we have with ourselves. We see ourselves in a narrative over time, who we were, who we are and who we might become as we project ourselves in to the future. Our stories and narratives are how we experience our remembering self. We are the author, actor and member of the audience. We are in a monologue that sifts through our past, unites with the present and posits the future. We create a sense of unity within the story including integrating incidents that were an unexpected surprise when they took place or seemed chaotic and confusing at the time. Memory is continually refined over the years to meet our current needs. We can also have a monologue with ourself in our childhood, as a teenager, a young adult, in our middle age and as our older self.
Our stories can bring coherence to what is being shared. Our stories and memories are not static. At times a story may be embellished or diminished for a particular audience. They all become part of our ongoing autobiography. Our memories are refined over time to meet our needs for who we are at the moment of retelling the story. There is an ongoing creation of memories and stories that are continually edited as new information is added or old information is lost or removed. The editing process refracts, redacts and provides nuance. Each telling of an incident or incidents may bring to light a new insight that deepens and influences meaning. Our history includes our metamorphosis as we move through shifts in relationships, career choices, priorities and beliefs. There is a moral element to our stories. They illustrate our values in terms of how we are not just who we are. They shed light on our character and our aspirations. The stories provide a sense where we have been and hint at where we may be going. Clayton Medeiros