Story Clinic with Dr Walter Willies
Who’s in charge?
Last month’s episode of the story clinic we realised that one strong and serious tap on the shoulder changes our alertness to where we are and what’s going on.
Now that you’ve risen from your seat and have some semi-conscious awareness of what is happening to you, what’s next?
The ability to choose is strangely human. We’re more likely to be encouraged to fit in rather than lead the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Animals have varying ways of forming habits, and humans have a clear capacity for choice which goes largely unused. Where we’re born, what culture we’re born into, the technology of the day, the political backdrop, the economic patterns are all givens, and that sets the stage for our ongoing drama. Few of us rise to positions that determine the props and wings of our large, living stage. We’re more likely to find the finance for the next impressive car, home, fashion, trend or flair that will give us momentary sensations of pleasure and recognition.
The power of choice goes beyond superficial limits. The human body is a wonderful array of chemical, physiological and physical processes, the vast majority of which happen quite happily without our deciding anything. That very persona in which we believe, that aspiration we call self, is built on decisions often involving more evasions than acceptance. When we choose, deliberately, consciously, carefully, we practise being in charge.
Once upon a time I was vice-principal in a boys’ college. The principal had a way of dealing with potentially messy situations which happen easily in a boys’ school. He’d arrive on the scene and ask, “Who’s in charge here?”. That changed everything.
In your life too, when you make that demand to yourself, you rise from being that semi-conscious spectator and have the choice to move from being a character to a narrator and then to the author. If you want to, you can also be just a mood, sweeping like a lonely wind down an empty street, or a howl of desperate failure fixated on an eternal grave. I suggest that you begin by looking at yourself as a character as this has the strength and import of rising above being a mere organism.
Anyone who has lived with someone for a long time realises that your known self and unknown self are equally visible to anybody who is paying attention to your character. Your preferences, values, habits, idiosyncrasies, perspectives and practices become more and more obvious as you begin to direct the character of your movie. This is interesting because whereas you’re free to direct your own character, there are other characters in your living movie over whom you have limited control. When you ask “Who’s in charge?” you’ll soon realise how important relationships are, and how delicate issues of leadership can be. To what extent and how you choose to be in charge of yourself as you practise paying attention to the story of the drama in which you find yourself is really important, as it defines how you confront everything around you. This also keeps on refining how you confront yourself, which is something that’s not habitual for most of us. The in-chargeness of our human organism is vastly unconscious: we can’t change the behaviour of our liver, although we can decide how much alcohol to drink, and we can’t tell the brain what’s ultimately good for us although we can build and activate strategies for well-being.
How you lead yourself is crucial to the direction of your unfolding story. The next instalment will pay attention to that. In the meantime, take good note that big decisions are seldom taken to good effect without collaboration, adequate backing and encouragement. Purposeful pioneering will make your heart beat deeper and faster. But the main character will need more than being the main character.
The drama of being alive in this huge cosmos asks for an author, but that’s a few steps into what’s unfolding as we begin to tell this human tale.
Contacts
Walter Willies
Emeritus professor of Narrative Studies, Western Orthodox University, European American University
The Story Clinic
Glasgow London New York Cape Town