A personal essay on the need for and power of stories
My lovebird flew out on Monday and I have been pondering the need for, and the power of stories in our lives.
Guess it started with an objective read, of Homo Deus by Yuvah Harari. He argues, I think, (though I could be wrong coz I stopped half way, too affected by personal life altering events) that humanity is what it is because of our ability to make up stories, as a community, that allows us then to co-operate on a global scale, and this sets us up as the most powerful animal on earth. stories are our power.
It's lovely to read at first, potentially destabilising if we ponder a bit more. We can find that balance again of course after some acceptance, but the world has shifted slightly for me now.
So let me start again at the beginning.
We rescued a lovebird nearly 3 months ago. We took care of it. On Monday I accidentally left the window open when I released the bird from the cage. My lovebird flew out. my kids and I are sad. These are the facts. as bare and dull as can be, but the range of emotions we have experienced since that Monday morning... suffice to say we each experienced depths of passion and emotion we never knew we had ( the younger two certainly didn't, they are 7 and 10). Life changed.
And we have had to tap on stories to bring us through. What the tragedy is doesn't matter. This may seem so trivial to some, you are wondering what am I even writing about. for others you may empathise. But the point is not what what was lost. It's that something that we felt dear to us was lost, and how stories have been coming in to help us move on.
Some of these stories have to do with the stories we told ourselves when he first came to us. "He came to us" is itself a story. In truth we went to him after a neighbour called, unsure of what to do with a bird that had flown into their house.
Story number 1. We saw him as a gift from God. We didn't ask for him. He came to us ( thru a neighbour, but that's a minor detail!).
Story number 2. He was, for me, Meenakshi Amman's own little parrot. of course hers is a green parrot and mine is a cousin, the peach-faced love bird, also green but with a shorter tail, more colours. Still these are details and there is a grand narrative to keep us, so to me, he was her kili, arrived in our lives to enrich us, bless us.
Now, he flew away right after my prayers, during a particularly holy time, (it was while I was in the middle of my sasthi viratham).
After flying out he came back to my hall window and I could not entice him in. With a little peep he took off, in 1 second he was across the road headed towards my favourite tree.
Stories stories. He was meant to fly free. He came to my house to recuperate his strength. He is not really a pet bird he is part wild. Why else would his wings still be unclipped, why else won't he have leg rings and ids, Why else will he not let us rub his head or engage in other pet like behaviour- he is close to 4 years old.
He left to find a mate.
He was meant to leave, fated to leave as it happened during prayers. He even came to say goodbye (poitu varaen) the way we do, we never just leave without saying goodbye.
It is cruel to keep a bird caged or locked in a room. Man can he fly. Even the neighbours across the road commented on how well he flies. That helped this story. He was meant to fly free . He can defend himself. He tries to peck at the cloth we use to catch him, never lets us touch his head . One day, while in the park connector, he may land on our shoulder to say hi, and we will see he is doing well in the wild.
When we love something we let it go. if it comes back it's ours, if it doesn't it never was.
The best - he is not amman's bird , he is Amman herself, come to visit us for awhile, to bless us.
He is a soul, with his own journey and destination. So foolish of us to imagine the world centres around us. We met, we parted, each on our own journeys, blessed for the time we had each other.
I rattle these off like they are flippant. They are not. Believe me they literally pulled us out of the depths of despair . I am not out of it now, just handling the loss a bit better perhaps. I haven't been able to sleep since he left. When my eyes close I see him. I imagine him flying. I imagine us sending out love like a blanket to keep him warm and safe. I pray. I ask God to fly with him, take him to food and water and keep him safe. I tell myself there is nothing else I can do now. and to sleep I watch Friends and stuff like that until I fall into sleep in oblivion. Like drinking to oblivion I Netflix to oblivion modern coping methods . The days pass by in a swirl of things to be done, but the nights, they keep me awake with all I could not process earlier.
Anyway back to my stories.
For each of these stories, there is a nugget of doubt, an anti-story if you will.
His loss is punishment for my carelessness. My missing him, my having been responsible singlehandedly for the grief of babies and adults in the house alike - these are my punishments. I hope he is safe though. Let my punishment end with the suffering of my self and family. not him. He is blameless.
If he were not a pet bird why did he hop onto a bowl and eat from our hands? a voice whispers. So the theory, not fully pet, partly wild. he doesn't let us catch him easily,never wants to come down when we call . but we do catch him, so will he be safe?
What if the end all I am doing, when I look out my window at night talking to God, about taking care of him, I am just talking to nothing, just to the night air.
Here's the killer question: if everything is a story, are they even true? The destabilising bit of that book in action see... if everything we believe in are just stories, what if that means nothing we believe in is true? But then ... another story to the rescue. Beliefs are everything. It doesn't matter if something is true or not, its our belief that makes it so.
I'm not saying this for things like "fire burns", "earth is round not flat". Where something can be verified let's not mess with that, but with the intangible, for our lives depend on the intangible too you know. W need both, and for those, the belief in something is power. Yes they are stories, and our beliefs make them matter, make them true in some way, help us live our lives. Thus where I am now. My ground has shifted I have questioned (not for the first time, but now in a time of greater personal pain than before) and I have found my way back.
Stories are what we live on, beyond food, water, and shelter. In our jobs we tell ourselves stories, that our jobs matter, that we work towards something higher than ourselves. We desperate creatures need our lives to matter. That also makes us different. Other creatures exist. They play, they get angry, hungry, they fight, they love they die. But they may not wonder what's the point of it all. Whereas we, we need to have a point. We crave it. stories allow us to fulfil that need.
In the end, stories have the power we give them. Stories have the power to uplift us to our potential. Stories help us stay connected across space and time. Stories give us both roots and wings. and we keep adding to the stories of our lives.
