Living out stories

I don’t know how related this is to TSK insights about stories and self, but the recent material reminds me of my personal past.  I had an addiction to day dreaming which threatened my actual life.  I gave up writing fiction for twenty years, out of a sense that I couldn’t afford to spend so much of my life energy creating fictional homes for my mind, when my lived life needed attention.  I tried to abstain from idle day-dreaming, with the sense of urgency that I imagine people in AA bring to their addiction.  Years later, when I encountered the Noble Eightfold Path, I recognized a wonderful vehicle for this earlier incipient insight: Vision dies on the vine, unless it finds a home in Intention; and both go nowhere, unless we find a way to bring intention into the life we are leading.  One way of putting this insight could be: “There are worse fates than living out our stories; we can get stuck in our stories like a hungry ghost who can’t find the door out into the sunlight.” –Michael