Fairy Tales and Everything Afterwards
Bit late to the party but, through a link from The Wicked Stage, I found this over at Derek Siver’s blog and I absolutely have to quote:
Our lives drifts along with normal things happening[…]
“But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”
That’s why people invent fights. That’s why we’re drawn to sports. That’s why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.
We’re trying to make our life into a fairy tale.
It’s Sivers responding to a talk he attended given by Kurt Vonnegut a few years ago. As a long term personal blogger (before I take anything from my life that I’ve moulded into fiction) this is something that I’ve had a creeping awareness of. Organising, structuring, hightening, making life somehow fit a bigger, grander narrative…
Yes. Yes, I most definitely understand that.