Stories - 051
Dear friend,
Every night, Golda asks for two stories.
The ritual recently changed from reading books to telling stories I make up.
I use events from her day to weave tales of fairies who learn to make friends and scientists who overcome their fear of swimming. Trees come alive and get better at sharing and talking bears help clean up.
This month, I want to tell you a story.
Get cozy and let your mind paint the picture.
Let's begin.
I. The Origin Story
Once upon a time, far away, there lived a boy.
He was an average boy of average looks and average smarts. Forgettable, even.
Except for one thing.
When this boy was small, he was digging in his backyard and found a magical stone.
A bright blue-swirled stone that sparkled in the sun.
It fit perfectly in his tiny hand, polished smooth as glass.
When the boy held it tightly, he believed that people would fall under his spell.
His friends would want to play with him.
His parents would give him an extra treat.
His teachers would give him special attention.
So he kept this stone with him every day in his pocket and never told anyone.
As the boy got older, he held it when he talked to someone he liked.
Used it on scary first days and big test days.
We all have our own blue-swirled stones.
Like a superhero with an origin story, we all have an object that changes the course of who we are.
When we find a bit of magic, we try to hold onto it.
For the boy, the stone gave him the life he wanted.
Until the one day that it stopped working.
II. Magic Runs Out
It was July when the stone stopped working.
He remembers because it was nearly his birthday.
The boy went away to camp and the first few weeks went perfectly.
He made new friends. He got picked first for sports. His counselors found him charming.
But then one day, the boy's bunkmates came back from swimming and started yelling about the mess in the room. The boy held the stone, but it only seemed to make things worse.
At arts and crafts, the boy felt like he couldn't make anything good. Even with the stone.
Over the weekend, the boy discovered that his new friends went into town and didn't invite him.
His heart was a paper cup, stomped on.
His friends had betrayed him. And so had his stone.
He took a long walk and ended up at the lake.
One small sailboat sat alone, far off from the shore, stuck without wind.
Staring across the water, he thought of himself as the boat, stuck without the magic of his stone.
As we get older, sometimes it feels like the magic runs out.
Teddy bears and blankets lose their comforting power.
Our dolls stop making us feel like a caretaker.
Kisses don't heal (ok, sort of, but not in the same way they used to from mom).
Even stones stop working.
When the whole world once felt magical and then the magic is gone, it's hard not to feel lost.
The boy took out the stone, squeezed it in a fist one last time and threw it as far as he could.
It disappeared into the distant water.
Plip.
III. Beginnings, middles, and endings
Needless to say, the boy felt purposeless.
Who was he without the stone? How could he be so stupid to have carried so much of his confidence, trust, self-identity in something that could have easily been taken away?
What now?
So, like anyone looking to find their way, the boy began trying new things.
He joined clubs, sought new friends, got a haircut, changed his morning routine.
He was hoping for a new beginning but he just felt stuck in the middle.
We live in the middle for so much of our lives.
In the messiness between the start of something exciting and the heartbreaking end.
Or, like the boy, lost in the limbo between the dramatic end and a new beginning.
On the day when everything changed, it didn't feel any different.
Not at first, anyway. But sometimes beginnings are like that.
The spark happens so quickly, we don't even realize it's begun.
IV. Magic Can Be Restored
Like commuting every day with the same people, familiar strangers are all around us.
They're just a "hello" away from removing the label of stranger.
The boy had seen the girl since the first day of camp.
She had curly hair and red high tops with marker on them.
They had both had a lonely Summer.
And somehow they had found each other.
Their first kiss lasted only three seconds, but ask them both and they swear it was an hour.
By August they were sneaking out every night to be together.
His luck and his life were back on track, finally.
But this is not where the story ends.
Because when you believe in magic and then it suddenly returns, it has to come from somewhere.
V. Proof
It was on a picnic for the boy's birthday that he started to reframe his own story.
Maybe the stone never worked. Maybe there's no such thing as magic.
Like figuring most things out in life, it's always easier to connect the story in retrospect.
When we look back, we can edit. We see moments we thought were special, as outliers.
We can ignore coincidences that felt meaningful at the time.
We don't write our own story so much as we observe the story that emerges from the trends in data.
Looking back, the boy sought proof of his new theory in every small story.
Every time he felt left out–every selfish thing his bunkmates did–every failed art project– were all just signs that he was human. And part of being human is experiencing the full range of emotion.
Life is complicated. We can love and still be selfish. We can be generous and hurftul. We can share moments of joy and laughter, and still be difficult to be with.
And all of us are trying to make sense of our lives.
All of us feel lost sometimes.
The boy felt he had found his way.
With the help of the girl.
He watched in amazement and gratitude as she picked flowers.
How incredible that her story had intersected with his.
As he laid his head on her jacket, he felt something uncomfortable.
The boy reached into the girl's jacket pocket.
And sitting there in the palm of his hand was the stone.
The same blue-swirled smooth stone.
Now hers.
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Thanks for reading this and letting me see this experiment through.
I believe that entire email refrigerator project–not just today's– is a story.
The two main characters are me and you.
We're going through the same thing without always connecting the fact that we are.
It's most meaningful when we share that, connect, and let our stories intersect.
Not "The End." Never the end.
Always "to be continued."
Refrigeyalater,
Jake
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