N for Narrator

As N is the 14^th letter of the alphabet, this entry marks the beginning of the second half of the A to Z series.  I was stuck on this one for awhile…I kept waiting for N to make itself seen somewhere.  As I walked around or read or talked or listened, I kept up the search – asking myself over and over – where is N?  What if N is never found and the series stalls right here at midpoint?  Doubts raced.  Writing stopped.  Creativity languished.

And then it hit me.  Narrator.  After all, who was that doomsday speaker in my head, stifling my energy, but me?  I am the narrator of my life.  A narrator is one who tells, who relates, who creates a story from what happens for the purpose of knowing and being known.  Each day, in every encounter, in every experience, we are telling the story of our lives.

Helping, guiding and directing us is our narrator – who has two sides.  The inner narrator helps us to interpret and understand what we are experiencing.  As they say, stuff happens. These are the events that make up our life story.  Our inner narrator is always talking to us about those events, choosing which are significant, which matter, which are ignored.  This voice is shaped by our history, our experiences, our beliefs and our values.

Say there’s a new job posting at the office.  It’s your dream job – the work is a perfect fit for your skills, the pay is better, the office bigger, the title sure to impress.  You apply, you talk to the hiring manager, but ultimately you don’t get the job.  This is the event.  How you understand this event depends on your inner narrator – what does she have to say about it?  Maybe - “Typical.  You always mess things up.  Your career is dead in the water.” Or maybe – “Stupid manager. That is the worst interview I’ve ever had.  That department doesn’t deserve me.” Or – “I put myself out there and tried.  I’ll try again.  Life’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

Which narrator makes for a richer, fuller story?  Which narrator inspires and nurtures?  Which narrator do you want to represent you?  Because that’s exactly what the inner narrator does – what’s going on inside shapes how you show up to the rest of the world. This inner narrator is the writer and editor for the outer narrator – the voice who speaks to others, chooses which stories to share and how to tell them, and allows us to be known by others and to engage in authentic relationship with them. 

Nurture your inner narrator then.  Share the beautiful story that is you.  Because every life is a story, some a tragedy, some a comedy, all with purpose and meaning waiting to be discovered and shared.  Choose to live your story with courage, with your whole heart.  The world is waiting.

M for Mundane

I’m happy to be arriving at M at last, as one of my favorite M words gets a really bad rap.  M is for mundane.  Often used in a derogatory fashion, it’s actually quite a beautiful word, although it takes a bit of reframing to appreciate its full value.

Mundane comes from the Latin mundus meaning “world.”   Webster’s defines it as common, ordinary, banal, unimaginative.  

But really what is common or ordinary about our world?  Our life on planet earth?  Isn’t it amazing that every day the sun rises and we get to start anew?  Twenty-four hour cycles of trying and doing and failing and loving and sharing and reflecting and resting.  The entire range of human life and emotion there in every moment, every breath. 

Perhaps one reason we run from mundane is another M word – mortality.  From our day of birth, there’s only one direction possible for our lives – towards the terminus.  Chasing bigger, better, brighter may help us to forget that fact, but at the expense of the present moment. Stop right now.  Wherever you are, whatever you are doing.  What do you hear?  Listen deeper.  What do you see?  Feel?  Know to be true?  The sacred is in the secular.  Eternity is in this very moment.

Let us not then confine the sacred to a place and time, or the joyful moments of life to those outside of our mundane existence.  But let us see all of life as mundane beauty.  After all, this world is the only world we have at the moment.  While some may aspire to transcend it, most of us are right here, two feet planted on terra firma.  Louis said it best - what a wonderful world. 

Or put another way: “While man cannot live in a continual Sabbath, he should not resign himself to a flat two-dimensional life from which he escapes on rare occasions.  The place of the sacred is not a house of God, no church, synagogue, or seminary, not one day in seven, and the span of the sacred is much shorter than twenty-four hours.  The Sabbath is every day several times a day.” (Walter Kaufmann)

Nothing common, ordinary, banal or unimaginative about that.