The story you tell isn’t finished. Being unfinished it’s alive.

Much hasn’t been lived yet, much else was missed the first go-round. Even episodes you’ve told many times change as you change, though they seem so stable, like stakes pounded into the ground to which your idea of who you are is tethered. There are chapters waiting to be told so they can stop happening, and move gratefully into the past. Others, told again and again and again, would like to turn out differently this time.

The story is more than the sum of its chapters. Like you it’s made of subtle soul-stuff or the volts and chemicals of neural pathways, plans written in heaven or quark-driven chance. Like you the story is a mystery that seeks to know itself. Is it yours or do you belong to it?

Sometimes it’s bigger and older than you, the tale of your family or your people. Sometimes someone else entirely rises through it, Orpheus or Odysseus or Cinderella. Gradually you learn to recognize its profile.

Sit with the story. It will tell you everything you need to know.