Story Soup

Stories are portals into perspectives we do not see if we are distracted. In our connections to other people’s stories, we can find meaning. Meaning, a reason for being alive. As an individual, it cannot be an insulated, separated reason because I am not alone. Why I exist and how I matter has to be in the context of the soup I am in. If I am a carrot in minestrone soup, then I know how being a carrot fragment matters. The story of each carrot, tomato, bean, and pasta piece matters to the soup and to each other from back when they were seeds and until they have become energy to their eater. 

What is different for each of us and what is important to discern is how our parts fit together. I mean this in two ways. I am made differently than you or anyone else. Put together differently than you or anyone else with different parts than you or anyone else. Every experience I’ve had, especially in the early days, made the individual components. The emotional, mental, and physical ones. Even the experiences of my genetic and adopted ancestors had a profound influence on the way the parts of me were formed and fit together. That is the main gist of what I mean by the first way.  

The second way is how I and my parts connect to you and yours. The energy, emotion, the physiological interaction of all the ways we sense at the intersection of your story and mine. It is not a puzzle to figure out with a picture on the box. It is a living mysterious puzzle with a picture that begins to reveal itself as soon as we say “Hello.” We just need to be watching. Are we?