Life's A Story

We live not because of others.

I don't even think that we live for ourselves either.

I can concede that we live to glorify God, which is great on one level, but still generally terrible from the immediate day-to-day running of one's life when free will is taken into consideration.

I do have a hypothesis though, that we live for the stories.

I had mentioned before a long time ago that humankind's superpower is discipline. But discipline alone isn't sufficient to explain why we do the things we do, from the daily routines that we are used to, to the acts of service that we ought to be doing to glorify God, evangelise to the lost, and edify the saints.

What's the whole point of doing all that we do if not for the stories that we leave behind?

I had mentioned the concept of emergence in an old entry, and I think that I managed to refine a little bit more about the love of emergent systems over stochastic/deterministic ones. That refinement is the idea of developing a narrative in the form of a story.

Prior to the creation of symbolic logic and the terseness associated with it for precise communication as used in science, knowledge had passed from one generation to the next in the form of stories. Tales of creation, of appropriate social behaviour, of why certain places are visited during certain time periods, of why those guys across the river were Bad News were part of the proto-knowledge transmission process. One of the first few things that a young child learns after basic vocabulary is the creation of stories that they tell and re-tell to anyone who was around to listen. We call children who can create their own stories in play ``imaginative''.

Even as adults, we find that we generally learn and promulgate information best in stories. Naturally, we have to make it all serious and call it by a different name: the ubiquitous case study. A case study is the ``professional''-speak version of constructing and telling a story, where key elements of the world as it was (assumptions and previous behaviour), the world as it is (observation of an opportunity and manners of exploiting said opportunity), and the world as it would be (predictions about the consequences, listing down both advantages/disadvantages with associated details as needed) are all told, just like how storytellers and bards of old used to do so, less all the ``fancy'' slide decks and templatised forms.

Work aside, the sum total of one's life is often reduced to a set of stories which had the person in it---that is how one will be remembered. Even God left His Word in the form of the Bible, a collection of books that tell stories that captured the most important aspects of His Will, and on how His Son is the final propitiation for our salvation. In the end, we seem to learn more about things or someone if he/she/it has starred in a story that we have heard, as compared to a list of dry attributes/properties.

The associative memory system that we have in our brain seems well-suited for handling information transfer through stories; the ability to remember abstract principles devoid of a linking narrative is a trained one that is atypical, which explains the relatively few people in the world who are actually good at manipulating symbols all day long [in their heads] without the need for creating a story.

A life well-lived, or a life fulfilled then is a life that has enough stories in it for a person to feel contented. To me, ``contentment'' means that feeling that one has that all things that one has desired to experience (i.e. make a story with) have been achieved. There may be more [side] stories that can be created, but as far as a contented person is concerned, they are optional since the ``main story'' (so to speak) has already been completed. Everything else that comes after just goes into the epilogue. Conversely, if the new narratives create a new chapter in the person's life, then the implication is that he/she is no longer contented with what he/she has experienced.

Maybe that's why I feel the way I feel. In some sense, my main story has completed already, and that's why I have a decreasing need to conform to what society claims is the main story that I should be pursuing. I didn't expect to work on computer systems, I didn't expect to study overseas, I didn't expect to fall in love (and be loved back in turn), I didn't expect to be good at making music, and I didn't expect to make peace with God.

I have studied overseas on government money at an amazing university for my favourite subject of computer science; I have worked with computer systems, writing new ones and learning things along the way; I had fallen in and out of love, with the last one being so serious that it lasted for five years; I played my dizi at a level that has some grudging recognition of those who do that as a livelihood; and I have found my way to Jesus Christ.

What more can I ask for out of my life?

I can write stories about my life---I have been writing stories about my life. This blog is proof, as are the poetry blog, the prose blog, and even my NaNoWriMo entries. Each and every one of them is a testament to my life, a fragment of a figment of my life's story.

Should I die today, I already have my legacy ready. There is, of course, that minor problem of disposal of my material possessions, but that's a problem for the living, not the dead. Where I would be going once I'm done with this mortal life, I don't need those material possessions.

I will have all I will need---the stories that make up my life.