Your Life Needs A Plot, A Sense of Progress

I’ve always sensed that my life is part of a bigger story. It’s the times that I’ve lost sight of this bigger story that I’ve felt the most lost in life. Life is full of seasons. And whether I’ve been navigating a season of excitement or suffering, it’s always been my grip on what I call “The Big Story,” or The Big Story’s grip on me, that has helped me make sense out of the ups and downs of life. Years ago I read a quote that put this perfectly:

The same impulse that makes us want our books to have a plot makes us want our lives to have a plot. We need to feel that we are getting somewhere, making progress. There is something in us that is not satisfied with a merely psychological explanation of our lives. It doesn’t do justice to our conviction that we are on some kind of journey or quest, that there must be some deeper meaning to our lives than whether we feel good about ourselves. Only people who have lost the sense of adventure, mystery, and romance worry about their self-esteem. And at that point what they need is not a good therapist, but a good story. Or more precisely, the central question for us should not be, ‘What personality dynamics explain my behavior?’ but rather, ‘What sort of story am I in?’ -Kilpatrick, William. Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993

What sort of story am I in? This is the question I’ve been asking all my life. This is the question I believe everyone in my city is asking and needs an answer to. This is the question everyone on the planet needs to wrestle with.-Excerpt from pages 9-10 of my book, The Big Story.