Parisian Phoenix Publishing

And Finding Our True Story

>>> Larry Sceurman

In my thinking, I have been revisiting the dynamics of three. This mindset that I have about things in threes all started, in my mid-thirties, when I took a course in philosophy and learned about Plato’s philosophy that man, the human being, is made up of three things: reason, emotion, and appetite. This urged me to look at life in threes which can run the gamut from beginning, middle, and end; past, present, and future; negative, positive, and neutral; me, you, and us; to the teller, the story, and the listener.

This putting things in threes helps me to stop thinking in black-and-white. The dualistic thinking of right and wrong, good, or bad made me too judgmental and added to my self-centeredness. Putting more color into my thinking expanded my imagination and allowed me to become a more honest observer of life. 

As an oral storyteller, I learned there is a three-way relationship in storytelling:  the teller, the story, and the listener. Now as an author of the written word, I find myself missing the energy of the listener. When I write, I sometimes imagine an audience listening to my words; most times I think of a person reading my work. To be honest I think of actual individuals, such as a friend, family member, or a particular type of person. I don’t know if this is beneficial to my writing or not. I do know that the lack of the listener has made me become more intimate with the story, for I am the teller as well as the listener. 

Joseph Campbell said, “A myth is a public dream, and a dream is a private myth.”  I believe this to be true. As a boy, I can remember telling my private baseball myth or fantasy to myself. When I dreamed I was in the outfield I could run and catch the ball like Willie Mays. At shortstop, I was another Ernie Banks. At the plate, I could swing the bat as good as or better than Mickey Mantle. They were wonderful baseball stories that I told to an avid listener, me. I never told these personal myths to anybody but me. For fear that people would think they were silly and foolish because they were way beyond the reality of my baseball skills.

All children do this and it is healthy to do. Our little stories of fantasies develops a much-needed imagination, gives us a secret place to be safe, which I referred to as Larry Land, and who knows destiny may take us to that elusive adventure within the myth. So, we learn to tell stories without an audience or a listener other than ourselves. 

As we grow into adulthood and beyond, we continue telling our personal myths to ourselves. We have fantasies about every aspect of life. We fantasize about work and vacation, sex and solitude, financial stability and buying our dreams but the element that is intertwined with all our fantasies is the fantasy of relationships.

The fantasy of work includes the fantasy with coworkers and bosses. In our heads we have these conversations: “Well, I don’t care what Bob said. The right way to do it is to replace the gigler pin after you change the skeedaford plate.” Or “I called you in Larry, because you have been picked as employee of the month and there just might be a promotion in the near future.”

In our vacation fantasy, we tell ourselves exactly how the family is going to react and behave. That this vacation is going to be the best of the best. Sex and solitude is self-explanatory. We all fantasize about winning the lottery and how we would love to spend the money on buying things for people in our lives. Fantasies of fear and joy and love all stem from relationships.

In the chemistry of a relationship, there are three parts: Trust, Communication, and Acceptance, like a three-legged stool if one leg is shorter the stool will be lopsided and uneven. If a leg is missing altogether the stool could not stand and becomes dysfunctional. The same is true in a relationship. If there is lack of trust, faith could not exist, loyalty would be weak, and feeling safe would be full of doubt. With nonacceptance, our tolerance would become impatience and flexibility would become rigid. Communication is the mortar that keeps the relationship together. Not just talking to each other but speaking the same language is essential.

I would like to pause and explain my usage of the words ‘myth’ and ‘fantasy.’ Myths are often allegorical and a foundation of a culture. I see family myths as sacred tales, which may or may not be true, that try to explain the way things are. Fantasies or personal myths are somewhat extravagant and have one author, in this case ourselves. We are the main character. We could be a hero or a villain, but it’s always about us. Fantasies are about me and myths are about we.

When I was young, I believed in the myths that my parents told me about family customs and traditions. Supper/dinner is always at 5 o’clock and if you were late, you have committed a sin. Worry was an appropriate thing to do and if you did it right, it could change things into a positive outcome. Humor is a valuable virtue in a person’s character. There were myths from education, myths from religion, and probably the most influential myths were the personal myths that I told myself. These myths and fantasies, positive or negative, shaped my values and influenced my thinking.

In my 20s, I was starting my own life and my myths became much different than the myths of my parents and the myths that I perceived from the educational system and religion. There was some friction within relationships. I communicated but not always in the same language. I did trust most of the time, and I more or less accepted things to a point. I still functioned with my family, as well as any family did. But I had this haunting feeling that I wanted to challenge their beliefs and many times I did. 

There was a period in my early forties that I was in a rut, my personal myth was stale and full of untruths in which I could not believe. My family of origin’s myths stayed the same. To generalize, you could say that their myth was the typical American middle-class fantasy, work hard, raise a family, and play it safe. There is nothing wrong with that story, except that it’s not my story. I was growing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, but there was a conflict, a confusion that I did not understand.

I did not realize how much I was attached to the family myths. I recognized that I did not play it safe, I was living on the edge. Being divorced and a weekend daddy had overlays of guilt. Work was just a job. I wasn’t meeting the standard of my family’s hallowed myth. I was annoyed with some of the educational myths that I’d learned and I was in great conflict with my spiritual beliefs.

I can’t remember where I gathered this information, which I call the baby elephant belief. When they used elephants for work animals, they had to be trained. One of the first things they did was to tie or chain a hind foot of the baby elephant to a tree. The young elephant would pull on its restraint and struggle to get free, over and over again. The elephant did this until it believed that when the rope or chain became tight, that was its limitation. You could stake the restraint in the ground, which the elephant could easily pull out, but didn’t.

The young elephant learned this myth, when the rope got tight that was it, it could go no further. The elephant believed that myth all through adulthood. We sometimes do the same thing with the myths and fantasies of our youth and young adulthood. These myths that are told to us as well as the ones that we tell ourselves become so ingrained that we have to unlearn them. For we become limited in our thinking, our creativity, and our spiritual awareness.

It was time for a change. I started to tell myself a different story that was more creative and positive. When I told myself my new personal myth and fantasized of the new Larry, it was like having my childhood baseball fantasies again. I was in Larryland, where I was the teller and the listener. So, I found unfamiliar places and new people to tell my story to and I had to limit my time with my family.

Telling myself this new personal myth was just the beginning. I had to take action and become the Larry that was in Larryland. I had to do the things that were told in the story. At work, I became a much better teacher, I discovered that I could express my creativity through storytelling and found more gratitude in life.

I realized that in between the person that I used to be and the person that I was becoming is the person of the now. The person of the now is the teller and the listener as well as the story itself. That person of the now got me out of Larry Land and into the real world where I could tell my true story to real people.

Telling myself and others a new story, I learned to do the sacred dance of life to a proper beat. My movements had more grace, I stopped stepping on people’s toes, I did not always want to lead, and my timing was adjusting. The three-legged stool of relationships was uneven because the leg of acceptance was short. Learning to accept things for what they are and not what my personal myth tells me they should be was a mystical awakening.

I can still struggle with relationships and become frustrated with my spiritual awareness. The thing that I battle with the most is telling my personal myths and fantasies to someone else. I realized that it is necessary to share my personal beliefs and visions with a person or persons. Not to dump all my garbage on someone or to have a debate on what values are better than the other. 

We need to tell our story to a good listener. A person or persons that can help us wade through the nonsense and if necessary point us in the true direction of our story. Letting go of these prideful attachments is a hard thing to do and we cannot do it alone. We do need a listener. One of the most intimate and spiritual things that we can do is to have that three-way relationship with the teller, the story, and the listener.