Of Stories and Narratives
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Werner Heisenberg
It will not be untrue to state that I wake up every day with a sense of wonder, at life, at existence, at mind, at thought and at feelings.
Before I start analyzing my day and parsing my thoughts, I play the game of realization.
Checking my evolvability capacity, my attention to experience and my appreciation for the pleasure of existence, I move.
Assuming that all is well I continue with my morning thought cum meditation routine.
It is my moment of silence, my moment of peace, a recollection of what I am, what I stand for and where is my mind going to.
I follow my overall arc of narration, the meta narrative of my life, checking that my master narrative, a subset of my meta narrative is coherent with the local story of my immediate experience. In this case, the story of my immediate experience involves both observations and reflections. Some include my body (sensation, responsiveness, receptiveness, sensitivity and so on), some relate to my feelings, sense-thought, perception and finally my thought for this morning. It may sound like a lot, but all this takes mere seconds. Habits and practice make this a casual motion.
The above is an example and a very personal one at that, for how to master the complex interactions of a mind, my mind in this case, in a modern-day setting.
To master the on-going continuous interactions in a mind as an event, I take the view that a comprehensive structure of narration needs be clarified and eventually implemented.
There is a certain lucidity necessary for responding with coherent vitality to the restlessness of our minds. That lucidity in turn invokes an inner courage to live fully while simultaneously tackling the greatest question of human existence, namely: what shall we do with our minds?
Narrative
If stories are that which controls the facts, narratives are the command center of storytelling.
A while back a friend asked me how I conceive of the difference between narratives and stories. The first thing that came to mind is that narratives have an almost magical ability to overreach and alleviate our anxieties when trying to convey a sense of that which is. In other words, narratives are that which makes sense, sense of the facts, sense of the story, crucially, narratives expand our horizons and bring home the feelings, the intelligence, and the logic of the world.
I think of narratives in terms of meta-narratives and master narratives, the difference being the universal versus the contextual. Further down within this nested hierarchy we shall find, narratives of the personal, finally reaching the inner core, the story of me — the event of I.
The first issue to tackle when parsing the concept of narratives is Time.
Narratives contain times, duration, periods and sequences, orders and successions, progressions and phases, interludes, and pauses.
Narratives are arcs, presenting huge conceptual meanings and directions, flows and motion.
In general, stories are containers of events representing change while narratives represent the flow, motion, and direction of the change.
Narratives have arcs while stories are pixelated. Moreover, narratives express complex ideas through the usage of language, symbols, and images while stories are local events within the narratives.
Narratives illuminate and convey, values, ideas, and attitudes.
Stories are the power train, but their container is the narrative. Narratives in the above sense shape our world views, consolidate our practices, imply our aesthetics, and influence our thoughts.
An interesting story embedded within a not large enough narrative will create restrictions and will result in a rigid mind. On the same token, an interesting narrative can uplift a personal story, moreover, a narrative that is wide enough to contain multiple stories enhances the stories it contains.
Narratives are robust systems, nimble and complex. Narratives relate the series (and order) of events described as stories. Events are perceptive incidents put together by a mind, they can be real or imagined but always refer to perception.
Narratives are open ended while stories have a beginning and end. Narratives turn stories into information, meta narratives into knowledge.
If stories are each like a pearl, then narrative is the necklace or string of pearls.
We may if so relate to Narratives as weaving devices:
Meta narratives weave strings of value (direction and importance)
Master narratives weave meanings of values
Narratives weave significance and consequences
Stories relate and contain the events of experience and perception
Events are the basis for all stories
Narratives change the order and manipulate times and chronologies but not the story itself.
Narratives imply expectations, stories fulfill the expectations.
Stories are point of view and perception, while narratives are meta indications of motivations. Narratives are better thought of as devices of the mind meant to cohere the differences and conflicts in stories.
The on-goingness of the event of life is a constant reminder of the inevitability of change. Changes in circumstances, changes in body and mind, and changes in ecology and social pressures. Hence it is a direct consequence that we change constantly, we interact with and relate to all life, we adapt.
We revise and acclimatize our stories, we continuously amend and modify our narratives, improving, correcting, and adjusting.
The very definition of subjectivity, we need remember, implies that there is no unbiased historian of the self, and so the story we tell must be carefully and meticulously constructed (just like a pearl).
Given that we are embodied cognitive systems, enmeshed in a relational universe, performing as minds, acts of prediction, simulation and creation of meaning, stories and narratives are crucial.
Understanding the role of narratives and their embedded stories become a fundamental activity of our minds.
And so, to the question of what shall we do with our minds, my first answer is narrate the story of our existence, narrate such that it enhances our well-being, increases our freedoms and sustains us.
Thank you for reading, more on this subject to come soon.
