Journal Entry: 3/20/2007 “After a Hard Day on Set”
I’ve been thinking about stories. It seems that so much these days fails to connect with what I feel is a good story. I was wondering what it is that I feel makes a good story. There’s no formula, but there is a goal. I was having a really rough weekend, just physically exhausting and I came across this during a break from my work, “We went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.” A poet named David wrote that in a song that’s now known as Psalm 66.
It stood out to me for a couple reasons. The first being that I had waded across a river twice that day as part of work, so going through water was fresh in my mind. And the other reason was how I have been thinking about stories recently. It seems that so much of what I’m taught about storytelling focuses entirely on the conflict and tension of the journey with little emphasis placed on the ending. This line hit home because it seemed to sum up what I feel stories should be; pain and struggle ending in redemption.
Life isn’t much good without hope. It seems to me that the stories that I connect with the most are the ones that end in redemption and instill a sense of hope in their audience. Good triumphs over evil. The pain of the journey was worth it because it ended in a place of abundance. Love overcomes all obstacles and hate is left to wallow in the wayside.
I never felt the place of abundance this weekend. I went through the water, read this, felt encouraged, and then headed into the fire. Things got harder, but the hope stayed with me. Many people would say that life’s not about happy endings and I would agree that things often end up pretty shitty. But is it that life isn’t about happy endings or is it that we don’t believe in them?
1 comment:
I so needed to read this tonight...you have no idea.... I know you're not advocating fairytale endings, but praise for the hope that we have. See, for us, the war is won; we're just fighting the last battles.
Right now I'm standing at the edge of the fire, looking in. I know that purity waits on the other side, and that the purification will be painful...maybe even fatal, but I'll never know the ending unless I live the story.
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