The other night when I was driving home from school I watched a young boy climb to the top of some outdoor bleachers. I was confused by the determined look on his face as he raced up the steps, and couldn't help but wonder what could be so important to this one kid. While every other child leaving the school yard remained oblivious, he had built this bubble around himself that seperated his story from the amoeba below. I twisted in my seat as we started to pull past the boy, needing to know the purpose behind his activity, and held my breath. As he pulled a folded white page from his pocket and released it into the air, we rounded the corner, and I lost sight of him.
Recently we've been talking a lot about personal stories, and how each experience and memory that belongs to a person ultimately takes part in paving their path. Every road you go down, every chance you take, it affects you and the outcome of your life. The main sentiment behind these discussions is that every person has a story, and it's our job to make sure our stories stand out.
Because these discussions have been paired with and centred around lessons about our career paths, and post-secondary life, and how we are going to use our projects to jumpstart our stories, there has been somewhat of a nervous energy surrounding the word ever since. Understandably so, when you consider the examples of professionally successful women in articles thrown at us, immediately followed by the instruction to look at the person to our left and ask whether our story will be better than theirs. To say it felt daunting would be an understatement. It seemed unfair to me in that moment, to put us all into a situation where we were free to foster and learn from each others talents, only to force us into the mindset that we were suddenly competing for the best stories.
I understand what the point behind this line of thinking is, we all want to be successful and in order to do that, recognition becomes valuable. But at the same time I find it extremely frustrating with how large of a spectrum we are being nagged to identify with. I don't believe that in order to be successful, my story needs to be compared to my friend's, or any other person's for that matter. Nor does it need to be treated as one singular life changing moment that equates to the entire value of my existence.
I like to believe that a person's story is comprised of all of the little arbitrary memories. Your accomplishments, your challenges, those are your circumstances. What creates your story, are all of the moments born from those situations. All of the quirky little memories that stick out on a page. Anything that made you feel love, or pride, or a moment of reprieve. Every person that you have effected, and has effected you. That is how you are supposed to define a person.
I can't handle being told to tell my story based on the bigger picture because I was always told to write small. When presented with an entire mountain, you should choose instead to write about a pebble. I have lived my life thus far perceiving my experiences this way, and i'm not going to stop now. Growing up, I had built a bubble around my story so that I could find comfort in the quirks, and shelter in the unconventional. Because others would see it as pointless, I hid my wonderfilled moments within a cacophony of every day life, where they were sure to go unnoticed. Just like the boy on the bleachers.
I never did get to see his paper plane hit the ground... but perhaps thats for the best. He didn't deserve to have his bubble popped.