Stories, Light, Tapestry

"Stories are light" whispered Gregory the Jailer.
Stories. Isn't all of life a story? Isn't your life a story? There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. There are characters and emotions and scenes and acts and costume changes and props. And of course it would be horribly wrong to say that because stories are light, that they are all light hearted. The key to good writing - at least to good story writing - is tension, conflict. Rising and Falling Action. Climax Denouement. It's not easy going and smooth sailing and happy-go-lucky all the time.
Something I need to remember far more often than I do. And by remember, I do actually mean live out...
The thing that I'm trying to get at is the rich tapestry that our lives make. So many interconnected threads all affecting each other. It's like a spider's web, but so much better. See, if you think of a spider's web, you're still only thinking about yourself. Because the only point to a spider's web being all linked together is so that pressure can pull on the feeding line and alert you that dinner time is here.
Life isn't about you. Or me.
Life is a tapestry. Everything is interwoven, interconnected - made up of Age Lace, if you will - and so much bigger than any one thread. It's many threads working together to make a picture. And that picture is ultimately not about you. It might be a picture of you - a picture of you and the path, the plan of your life. How it went. Who affected it - or who it affected.
Is your epitaph like your tapestry?
I think of the tapestries in Redwall. Didn't they tell stories? But they were centered around a single character. They told his stories. And that's what our tapestries should do, at the end, they should tell our story. They should show our greatest triumphs, our most loved ones - and maybe even some of our darkest defeats. Because those things make up the story of our lives. Not just the happy moments that others recall in our eulogies. Not just the sad moments that depress us when we're tired. And not just the people that we lose ourselves in. But all of it. The rising and the falling action. The other characters.
But, if the tapestry isn't completed until after our lives are - what's the point?
That's why it should be a tapestry (as opposed to a spider's web). Because a tapestry lives on after we are gone - as will our story. And maybe it will do some good to some other people, some day. That many 'somes' to me suggests that it's not entirely likely. Who has the patience to look at a tapestry and discern the story, to understand the significance of every thread, to appreciate the time and the pain and the love and the joy that went into its creation?
Who, indeed, is CREATING our tapestry?
Do you think its being created for your own good?
Stories are light.
Shouldn't we go into all the world and proclaim that stories matter? That having a great story, full of rising and falling action - joy and pain - many characters, many places, many props, many costume changes - that it matters? That being content to sit where we are and not move on, not experience life to the full, missing out on what we could be experiencing; that all of that is a bad thing? That perhaps boredom is a bad thing? Or at least long and extended life-long periods of boredom. Aren't we supposed to experience more than that? Isn't boredom - long-term - a death of the soul? A death of the person? A loss of life? A loss of thread, a loss of vibrancy, a loss of color, a loss of story?
A loss of light?
Darkness?

Isn't the light supposed to overcome the darkness? Isn't it more powerful? Doesn't it win in the end? Can't a single candle light up a whole room? Can't a single story change a whole world?

I suppose, that's only if the story of your life, the tapestry that you live, is made with the view in mind that it's only the final product that matters. The tapestry as a whole, with a view to the light that it adds, not to self, but to other. To Other.

This life matters. It should be emphasized. It's stories should be rich and vibrant and complex and intricate and painful and joyful and frustrating and wonderful all at the same time. It shouldn't be lived with a view to the end, with a longing for something better, with a desire to just get it over with. But with a dissatisfaction that constantly calls us forward. That keeps us on our toes. That keeps us moving. that runs us into new characters, new plot elements, new scenery, new props, new costumes. And in the end, we will be made glorious. We will have a wondrous story. We will be a wonderful light - and we will be shown the light that we were all along, because we were part of our own story.

Part of a larger story.

Our tapestry was just a single thread in a larger tapestry.

A single particlewave of the true light. That's invisible, for now, because we can't even see our own finished tapestry. Because we don't even know where it's going. But someday we'll be shown.
And the tapestry will continue.