A Story vs. A Fact: Creative Depression
In spite of many calls by many ‘self-help’ authors, psychologists (e.g. J. Peterson), and even entertainers like Tyson Fury advocating for some form of a ‘life mission’ as a way to overcome challenges one faces in life, there are many who will still doubt. The cause of this doubt likely stems from a psychological need to rationalise and provide ‘logic’ and ‘facts’ to life’s events.
A Fact
Newsflash!!! Life is nothing but mostly random…
We need stories more than we need truths. The idea that someone is ‘bad to you because ….’ only exists because we love to know the truth, supposedly about people and ourselves. The idea that something that happened is ‘bad for us because …’ only exists because we love to understand our world. The truth is, no one cares about the truth; and the world doesn’t care that you understand it. It just is. Forget about theologians, philosophers or psychologists, they do not live real lives. Their ‘truths’ about human nature are not grounded on dynamic reality and experience. Forget about scientists, their ‘truths’ about the nature of the world have only advanced thanks to engineering tools and machines. It is also the engineers who build the tools we really need to survive, not the scientists.
We need stories. Not truths. What provides ‘order’ to the randomness of the universe and life events, is NOT a rejection of randomness or an embracing of ‘truisms’; it is the embracing of story-telling.
The idea that all one needs for life and happiness is to know the truth is an old one. The truth shall set you free Jesus said.
The dynamic of actually acquiring and assimilating the truth though, is rather complex.
What is ‘truth’?
The truth is: the Internet exists, Medium exists, I exist, You exist, a computer exists, your (the reader) eyes exist, my typing fingers exist, I starting re-writing this at 5:30am in the morning in Johannesburg - South Africa, I had a draft of this essay about 7 days ago, I am re-writing this on a Sunday morning….
All these “statements” are true. They are ‘truth’.
But what use are they? Is truth here to give you and me just ‘the facts’?
The reality is: the entire category of ‘truth’ is entirely useless and unhelpful. This is a point made abundantly clear by many philosophers of pragmatism (e.g. William James).
I am not a pragmatist myself. I believe in creative beauty; for its own sake. Truth can be a form of creative beauty; enjoyed for its own sake.
Truth can be enjoyed. Yet the form in which we have thoroughly enjoyed truth as humans is that of story telling and not ‘facts-telling’. Jesus, the famous ‘truth-teller’, taught in parables.
One could say that, in this sense, facts are never the goal, stories are. Facts, truths, religion, morality, and ‘science’ are not the focus of human existence and enterprise, stories are. This is not to say that facts, truths, religion, morality, and ‘science’ are UN-important. They are instruments of stories. They serve stories. They ground stories.
The story also provides an assimilation and acquisition system for facts, truths, science, etc.
When we were taught (wrongly!) in school that if one ‘knows’ the facts (primarily through repetition, rotation and memorization in primary school), thus later enabling one to reason (in secondary school); it was an extension of the ‘facts lead to truth’ or ‘the truth is more important than the story’ idea. It is no wonder most primary school kids prefer watching cartoons on tv or playing video games! It is also no wonder our educational system is no longer capable of producing child prodigys like Mozart, Gauss and Pascal and Picasso.
The point I am making here is that stories are NOT anti-fact or anti-truth; they are very much pro-truth. Stories provide a much superior way to acquire and assimilate many truths than a ‘facts-focused’ system would ever be able to.
Wiring the UNCONSCIOUS
One evidently can choose to be part of the story already written for them. They may very well be unwilling participants to another story.
The decision to NOT write and make one’s own story is certainly a free choice. But it is simultaneously also a decision NOT to build a world of your own making, i.e. a decision to have ‘the world’ make a story for you, with you only being a passive participant.
If one’s willingness to be a passive participant happens to coincide with one being happy, rich or successful, then the decision (perhaps the indecision) becomes more bearable.
The problem is that many people are told that they have ‘little to no choice’ when it comes to the decisions they make in life. They are told that life is a story in which they are, essentially, passive participants with limited decision power.
This, I believe, is what one the largest contributing factors to depression and general life failure among creatives, victims of violence, entrepreneurs and entertainers. If one were to happily participate in the general story of studying hard, working hard, getting married, having kids and going on pension, then there is no loss in dodging one own’s responsibility to write a new story for future generations to study (as a negative or positive lesson). For a creative person, this would be a great loss to his or her sense of purpose or existence. Even worse, for those suffering from trauma, this ‘forced participation’ in the general story may prove to be extremely harmful, if not deadly (i.e. suicidal). Why would one, for example, willingly accept the reality of having been raped, and still believe that they can live a ‘normal’ life of a job, marriage, kids and a pension? A ‘unique’ story, one that actually fits their reality and circumstance, but still allows them to overcome their pain or loss, is usually their only way out…
We need to be extremely careful then, that we do not unconsciously participate in the stories we have no interest in. All the ‘facts’ of life, with all its suffering and joys, flow into a deep state of chaos when we are unwilling participants of a story we are not proud of or happy about.
A Story
Life is not about facts. Not even science is all about facts.
Life is about a story, a narrative, a mission. You tell it to yourself. You tell it to others.
Facts and ‘truths’ are the stuff of death. Not life. But there would be no life or birth without death and pain; thus, facts and truth are there to anchor your story, your goals.
Any story has a context. We need stories that fit our reality, our abilities, our constraints, our resources, our experiences, our time, and our potential.
A refusal to write a story, is a refusal to live fully. A refusal to live fully, is a dangerous playground for people with wild creative abilities…
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