Author Archives

    Mark L. Casey

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    Reader & Advisor

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    The imminent philosopher Loudon Wainwright III wrote:

     

    Reader and advisor
    will my dreams come true?
    Use your magic science
    Show me what to do
    Should I take some action?
    Or should I just lay low?
    Reader and advisor
    Which way should I go?

    Fortune tellers are fascinating. Their claim is so outrageous that it is intriguing. Psychics claim that they can use some tool (crystal ball, tarot cards) or some innate sixth sense to see into your future. From this “reading” of your future they can provide advice. Should you take some action? Should you just “lay low”? Visa and MasterCard accepted.

    “Which way should I go?”

    The idea of time intrigues me. The Past. The Present. The Future. “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future” (thanks, Steve). If you could really have someone look into a crystal ball and know your future exactly in all its detail, would you like for them to tell you what it reveals? To that hypothetical I say no. I already know I am not getting out of this thing alive, so why know how it ends and then spend the rest of my life dwelling on the gory details? I prefer to dwell on the positive.

    The Past is important. We study history in order to understand what has happened with people, places, and things before us. It helps explain how we got here and why the southern border of New Mexico is not straight across even with the western boundary of Texas. It helps us know why calculus was invented. It brings us up to speed on the struggles of women for equality and the reason narrow gauge railroads had tracks that were narrower than 4 feet 8.5 inches.

    Narrow Gauge

    Our personal Pasts are also important. The way you were raised, nurtured, and educated has an impact on who you are and how you view the world. If your past was difficult or deficient, your ability to function in the present will be impacted. Your Future is at stake. Therapists are trained to help people deal with their pasts and make progress in the Present and Future.

    The Present. Right now. We are urged to stop and smell the roses with good reason. In a real sense, the present is all we have. We can engage in present-oriented behaviors and future-oriented behaviors. Sometimes we can be fortunate enough to find actions that are both present- and future-oriented. If we are always doing future-oriented stuff, where’s the fun? All work and no play… If we are always doing present-oriented stuff, where’s the maturity?

    The Future, as we have said before in this blog, seems to be the exclusive domain of humans. Some animals exhibit limited instinctual behaviors that  prepare for the future. Squirrels store up nuts and bears fatten up before hibernation. This is quite different from your capacity to form a mental image of some future accomplishment and then set about to make it happen.

    Much more effective than any palm reader, you must learn to be your own “reader and advisor.” Your future can be “read” to a certain degree, and your advice can be grounded in reality.

    These are the tasks at hand.

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    Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

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    Which kind of story is most likely to move you emotionally: fiction or non-fiction?

    Does This Impact You?

    When you hear the story of The Trail of Tears where Native Americans were forcibly evicted from their native lands and made to march to present-day Oklahoma, do you feel their grief and pain as thousands of people died along the way because of racism and in order to satisfy a desire for their land?

    There is something about a “true story” that always gets to me. I always seem to come away with a resolve. Perhaps it is my resolve to never mistreat someone, or a resolve to stand up for injustice. Whatever it is, I feel the impact of a powerful true story.

    The true accounts of African-American slavery and Nazi cruelty always fill me with shame, dread, anger, and resolve.

    Non-Fiction

    However, does a fictional story have the same ability to move? I believe that the power of story is so compelling that even fiction can accomplish it. How do I know that? Because fictional stories have brought tears to my eyes. Ol’ Yeller still gets me right here. Fictional stories have made anger rise in me. These made-up stories have made me resolve to change some behavior. A fictional story like Love Story can even make me behave differently. A fictional story, then, can drive emotion, spur thought, and prompt action.

    The Storyteller

    The skill of the storyteller has a lot to do with this. A poor storyteller can ruin even the best of stories, regardless of whether it is fiction or non-fiction. Likewise, a great storyteller can work wonders with either type of story.

    So What?

    What’s the big deal? Well, if I can hear a story, whether fiction or non-fiction, and be moved to action, then I should be able to harness the power of story to make a positive impact in my life.

    You and I have the ability to write stories. Even if you are not a writer of fiction, you have the capacity to create a great story of your future and to act in the present in order to bring it to pass. Since this ability is a uniquely human ability, we should use it to great advantage. Now is your future story, or forward story, fiction or non-fiction? Well, since it is in the future and hasn’t really happened yet, we will have to put it in the category of fiction. Just because your view of where you are going is fiction does not mean it is powerless to drive you into future-oriented behavior today that can help turn the fiction into non-fiction.

    Anyone who has set a goal and then accomplished it has written a fiction about the future and then engaged in behaviors to turn fiction into reality.

    That’s the big deal.

    I am convinced it is a really big deal for all of us. Bigger than most of us realize.

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    History is Story

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    We tend to think of history as objective truth agreed upon for the most part by all of those who have really studied it. It is certainly taught like that. For example, we believe Benjamin Franklin lived and did certain things.


    The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1757)

     I am an amateur historian, or more properly a history buff. I do not have a history degree, so I am missing some of the  necessary background to speak with authority about the academic field of history. I plan to take a course at some point in historiography, the study of how historians do history. Historiography is about the methodology of history.

    History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past. – A.J. P. Taylor

    Even without that formal historical background, I do agree with Taylor  that history is really story. Think of your own life and recall some event that occurred a while back. When you get to my age there are events that occurred when I was a teenager that I think I can recall with great clarity.

    For instance, the summer before I began seventh grade the school yearbook staff took a weekend retreat to the beach home of one of our fellow staffers. Everything was going great until we tried to get a sailboat that was on a trailer unstuck from the sand. The mast of the sailboat hit a 7,900 volt electric wire. Those of us who were holding on to the boat and/or trailer got to make a trip to the local hospital for various burns and injuries.

    That’s a Tall Mast

    Do you see what I did there? I experienced this event. I know it happened. You do not know it happened. I had to tell you a story to get you oriented into what I claim happened. Now, do you believe me? That may depend on a lot of factors. Do you consider me to be a credible witness? You may not even know me. You shouldn’t put too much faith in someone you don’t know. Another question is how good my mind and memory are. Was it really 7,900 volts? Was I about to enter seventh grade?

    Here’s another thing. My wife of nearly thirty years was also on that yearbook staff. If you put us in different rooms and asked us to tell everything we remember about that event, our stories would not completely match. They would be close because not only did we experience it together, but we have discussed it many times over the intervening years and have helped shape each others’ recollections of what happened. But if you asked any of the other people who experienced it, and who have not been discussing it together for years, I suspect the stories would differ in some important ways.

    Your job as a listener to the various stories would be to make some decisions about which parts of the story are consistent and about what you think really happened. You might decide that some people are not credible witnesses for whatever reason.

    If history is story, then what can we believe? I am not saying that history cannot communicate objective truth. I live in the United States of America. I know it has a real history of men and women who did real things in real places to secure the country’s identity as a nation. If I really want to know that history, I must read and listen to the stories told by those who witnessed it, or by those who have studied those original stories. Sometimes those stories are presented in letters, in artwork, in photographs, in oral tradition, and in other ways.

     

    Why does this matter?

    If you do not care where you are, where your nation and world came from, and why many of the current events are occurring, it may not matter to you. Most of us do care. We want to understand the historical forces at work that set in motion many of the conflicts in our world and many of the advances we benefit from and that we work to build on.

    There are enough witnesses that Ben Franklin lived and did certain things that I can conclude that his life really happened. I can read things he wrote, including his autobiography. I can see depictions of what he looked like. I can hear the stories told by those who knew him. The existence of Ben Franklin is an objective truth to me even though I live centuries after his death. I arrived at that conviction through narratives or stories about him and about our nation.

    Your Story

    While there are practical reasons to care about world and national history, there are also reasons to care about our personal history. Where did you come from? Where have you been? What has happened to you? This is why therapists exist and offer a valuable service to people. They can help explore personal pains, traumas, triumphs, and failures in the past that can have powerful impacts on people today and on their view of the future.

    Story is powerful. It leads to action. Sad chapters of  history have been written about nations drawn into devastating wars because they believed a story that was told about a rival nation that had wronged them in some way. Just as powerfully, our personal stories can lead us to action or inaction.

    If listening to a compelling story can lead nations into war or shape our understanding of who we are and where we are going, I would say story is a very powerful force.

    In the next post we will explore the difference between non-fiction and fiction stories.

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    Future-Oriented Behavior

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    I heard NFL quarterback Colt McCoy say that he has not had a soft drink since he was like twelve years old. Most people I know think a cold Coke or Dr. Pepper is one of life’s simple pleasures. Why would Colt deprive himself of something that tastes great?

    For that matter, smokers derive pleasure from smoking. Those who have kicked the habit have chosen to forgo that pleasure for some reason. It doesn’t end with those just refraining from some potentially dangerous activity. Olympic and professional athletes actually punish their bodies running, biking, swimming, and skating for miles on end. Their bodies feel pain and exhaustion. Would you say this is present-oriented behavior? No! Present-oriented behavior seeks pleasure and comfort.

    “I love pain.”

    In a pool I would derive pleasure from the first lap. After that I would be swimming for some other reason. Why do these athletes do it? The answer is that they are engaging in future-oriented behavior. As the term implies, future-oriented behavior is behavior we engage in now in order to achieve some pleasure, reward, or benefit in the future.

    Regarding money, Dave Ramsey puts it like this: “If you will live like no one else, one day you will get to live like no one else.” He is encouraging the future-oriented behavior of budgeting, eliminating debt, building wealth, and being generous. It is the delaying of gratification. Hedonists will not be impressed by such an approach.

    Anthony Reading, author of Hope and Despair: How Perceptions of the Future Shape Human Behavior, made the observation that the ability to envision a future and then structure actions today to make that future possible is a uniquely human capability. My Welsh Corigs, while obviously the smartest dogs on earth, don’t seem capable of thinking about what kind of Corgis they would like to be in a year. I don’t observe them setting goals and then working to achieve them. The successful people that I know do exactly that.

    Future-Oriented Behavior?

    So, one of the keys to success is the practice of future-oriented behaviors. Take a personal inventory and ask yourself how many of your daily actions are for the present and how many of them are oriented toward the future, toward your dreams, and toward your goals.

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    Present-Oriented Behavior

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    In his excellent book Hope and Despair: How Perceptions of the Future Shape Human Behavior, Anthony Reading discusses human behavior that he terms present-oriented behavior. As the term implies, this is behavior with little regard for tomorrow. It is concerned with the present.

    People who are in the grips of addiction engage in destructive present-oriented behavior habitually. Whether it is alcohol, drugs, tobacco, eating, sex or any other addiction, the desire for gratification today trumps any concern for consequences in the future. Not all present-oriented behavior is destructive.

    This is Enjoyed in the Present

    Now, it is true that we literally live in the present. Therefore, all of our behavior takes place in the present. There is nothing wrong with enjoying life and pleasure. When I attend the Rose Bowl and cheer for my team, I am most definitely engaged in present-oriented behavior, and I love it. Let’s call that non-destructive present-oriented behavior. Of course, if taken to an extreme, even this kind of behavior could become destructive.

    Enjoying College Football

    However, some of the actions we do in the present have a purpose other than current pleasure and satisfaction.

    It is this second type of behavior we will introduce in the next post. Can you guess what it is?

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    Narrative: A Powerful Force

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    With this initial post we begin Forward Story.

    It is my hope that the things we discuss here will be of practical help to many people who are in need of a narrative. By the way, all of us are in need of a narrative.

    Narrative. I think we must begin here. A narrative is narrated by a narrator. Obvious, I know. I doubt that the power of narrative is obvious, though. A narrative is simply a story. Those two words mean the same thing. How powerful are stories? Stories can spark wars, change the world, and provide meaning to life. Something this powerful should be understood and utilized.

    Warships Represent a Narrative

    Narratives exist in books, in oral traditions, and in our memories. The interesting thing to me about our personal stories is that certain key elements of them remain invisible to us unless we purposely explore them. There is great value in bringing our stories to light and examining them.

    So, what is your story? Where have you been? What is your family’s story? Your nation’s? Your world’s?

    An even more important question is, regardless of your history, what is your story going forward? Let’s work on that together.