Is My Life Just a Story?

I love stories. 

Even pre-LOTR days, before rumored word of a hobbit had reached these virgin ears,

I can vividly recall my response to a good story. An epic (before epic was a thing) read. A really well-told tale.  

So naturally, when approaching my own life, I've managed to turn nearly every single experience into a miniature saga of sorts. 

It's not intentional. I don't do it on purpose. It wasn't even a cohesive, conscious thought until yesterday. 

But every now and then, I will realize that I'm living in a mild state disengagement — always ready, at a moment's notice, to look back down upon my own life from above. To gauge its narrative path. To examine its value, story-wise.   

The habit is, as I've only just realized, something of a double-edged sword. 

On one hand, viewing my life through this pseudo-lens allows for me to cope with rough experiences and take risky leaps. I mean — it may suck to death, but if it makes for a good tale for the-book-I-always-say-I'll-write-but-never-will, wasn't it worth it?

On the other (hand, that is), I think that to see myself only through the eyes of others is starting to limit what I can accomplish myself. If I'm always analyzing my life — my personality, my ambitions, my actions — using the criteria of others, how can I ever truly do anything real myself? 

If I'm judging each movement with standards set by someone else, am I ever really doing anything to my full potential? Or am I spending more time narrating my own life than actually living it?

My friend gave me a book last week. It's called Radical Acceptance. 

The cover is really lame. 

The content is really life-changing. 

"When we get lost in our stories, we lose touch with our actual experience." (p. 26)

I mean...

Right?

Maybe I should start spending less time worrying about how I want to view myself. 

Maybe I should stop reworking whether I frame myself as a cool kid living in NYC,

or a goofy naive girl navigating the big city, 

or an ambitious albeit inexperienced go-getter, 

or a Taylor Swift-esque serial dater with an affinity for free meals, 

and maybe just....

be.

I have a feeling that - in the end - to be anyone worth writing about, 

I have to first become someone who would never concern themselves with being written about in the first place. 

and now, 

clothes: 

helmut lang

free people, T by Wang

rag & bone

Madewell

Cheers.


Photos by Matt Engelhart.