"We become the story we tell about ourselves."

Yesterday I was reading this book, given to me by a friend, two years ago. I was meant to read this book in London, but I never did. I brought it all along, to every new house I moved in.

This year, I finally started reading it, and it's been a month now. It's called "A Home at the End of the World", by Michael Cunningham.

It's a truly beautiful romance, very well written, poetically lyrical.

So, yesterday there was this thing a character said that made me stop and think about it. "We become the stories we tell about ourselves." Bingo! That's it! We're nothing but the script we write for ourselves. We become the actors we ourselves direct. Some believe in destiny, and prefer passing all the responsibility over their lives to a greater divine force, justifying mistakes and fears. It's not that I don't believe there is such a force, but I think we can control that force and direct it towards where we want. This force is neutral and takes you wherever you please--it's all a matter of choice.

Each choice involves rights and wrongs. For every choice there is a loss and a gain and both are interchangeable.

Now, going back to the script thing...I do believe we become the story we tell about ourselves, especially when I think about my life. I can pretty much picture all the scripts I wrote and rewrote for myself. There are three stages. When you're unhappy about the character you've been playing, you start planning and writing a new one. When it's done, you start directing it and it seems a bit fake in the beginning, as if not working. But after a while, you forget about the direction and you start acting freely, without any further support, and then it comes to the point when you forget about the precise words that were in the script or the stage directions and you become the character itself and you live that way... up to the time you get tired again and you decide to tell yourself some other story about yourself.

Sometimes you change the stage, the theater, the other actors to work with... Sometimes you keep playing the same play and the same role for years and years.

All I say is... good actors are multi-faced and they acknowledge that by playing different roles they're learning and feeling more, in different ways... and fundamentally keeping up the passion for life.

Some others, for fear, never leave their comfort zone and prefer playing it safe.

I don't play it safe. I play it dangerous.

Cheers!