Should We Live Our Lives as a Story?

The popular, glamorised Instagram world encourages a life in which ‘living for the gram’ is sought after and even encouraged. Should we be living our life for the story it gives us instead? Is there something more to this?

Would you watch a movie where someone works for years in order to buy a Volvo? Probably not. So why do people live their lives like this and expect them to be meaningful. Maybe we should be living life like a movie with endless stories.

Most movies, or stories, start out as a character wanting something and overcoming some type of conflict to get it. It is therefore about character transformation and development – it’s not the search that counts but the transformation the search creates. Yet, when conflict appears in life we don’t embrace it. When challenging, exciting opportunities appear, we don’t take them.

Great stories require work, characters are forced to change. People often change life’s TV channel for stories, stopping at the one that seems most compelling in the moment, the best available at that time. But we need to take control of the stories we write ourselves.

Looking at life realistically helps too. Sub-stories come along, like marriage. People think that the climax of their sub-story was the climax of their human story – but the human story goes on and hence remain unfulfilled.

In essence, letting go of the idea that life has a climax, a big blockbuster ending and appreciating the transformation and conflict which is what is rewarding and meaningful sounds like a good idea to me. Living life for the human transformational story and not the Instagram story – is an important distinction though.