Foundation Day & Stories That Protect

The Foundation Day of Hungary reminded me how important stories are in our lives.

J.J. Abrams says: “Life often makes no sense. There is something about stories that gives a sense of order and purpose to the world and allows us to live other lives than life we’re living.”

Stories allow us to refine and focus on what our past and what our future means to us.

Tony Robbins says: “Change your story. Change your life.”

I take it that both of them understand how important it can be to us to have a practice by which we focus and then based on that focus,

whether it is reenabling ourselves to focus on past event finding a new narrative and a different story that we can tell ourselves about them or doing the same with a future focused story we build and navigate our life accordingly.

So what is a story and what are some of the practices by which we can build our stories.

“They say there are only seven stories, I think there might only be one story.”Ron Howard

I found this idea very empowering and I’ll tell you about my interpretation of this quote soon but first we have to understand why there are two masks in the logo for Theater Mode on the Apple Watch.

I once believe that one can make the distinction between all stories based on this:

“Is this a comedy or is this a tragedy?”

My foundation for this belief was that a story rests upon the two pillars called intention and obstacle.

If the intention surpasses the obstacle then it’s a hero’s dream come true and it is a great comedy.

If the intention doesn’t surpass the obstacle then it is a tragedy.

But then at one point I began to believe that “one man’s tragedy is another man’s comedy and one man’s comedy is another man’s tragedy.”

It other words, whatever happens it is always up to the Storytellers to tell what happened but the audience will decide what this meant for them and how this relates to their own lives.

But how could there be only One Story?

I am in the belief that we can say that there is only one story. In this case all stories may just serve on goal. That goal is to protect.

Even a poorly told story has one goal. To protect.

We pass on these stories we have as humanity with the understanding that the next generation may just need them one day.

We act out these stories with the belief that it will protect us and the ones closest to us.

But it’s not a one size fits all and if we believe all stories serve one goal, which is to protect than we must realize:

The shield we give to young person to protect themselves in times of need is different than the armor we construct around our older brothers and sisters.

People can outgrow their means by which we attempt to protect them and they may create protection for themselves better than we ever could.

A collection of stories they choose and revisit or let go of when these no longer serve them and the experience that comes with it.

I hope that they will be ready to share their stories when the time right.

Thank you for reading this!

Patrick