My stories are always good. Ok, maybe not always good, but they are mine. I am, after all, writing this month in the service of robust vulnerability and not selective vulnerability. Quite a few of these gems I have told a number of times over the years in a number of contexts. Lately they have felt like performances that lack conviction. I find myself using them to leverage a response from someone, not really sharing something meaningful to me.

That realization has hurt, because I love my stories. I love the way a good story can transport someone from a place to a time around an idea and back to the present moment. Mostly the pain has come from feeling the like the magic is leaking out of these pivotal moments of my life. My retellings are falling flat because I am trying to refill them with forced hot air: air that has been compressed by self-criticism, and without faith in their value in the first place.

I found myself, yesterday, listening to myself tell someone else a story. It was innocent enough. I was telling one of my stories from Scotland. It was one of the big ones. It had lots of adventure: living in a small fishing village on the North Sea working as a carpenter. It had drama: cutting off the end of one my fingers and being rushed to the hospital. It had humor: spending days on “whiskey tour” with a bandaged hand driving on the wrong side of the road. All in order to culminate with a powerful life lesson: ending up getting fired because I decided to be honest with our client. There it was, outlined and ready, wrapped in a tiny bow, coming soon to a cocktail party near you.

However.

Thanks to our collective efforts, my dear cohort of luminary pilgrims, I have been practicing patience with myself. I have been slowing down a beat or two and allowing time for intimacy to grow. I am leaving space to embody how I choose be in a conversation. By slowing down yesterday, I got to learn something from the story. I was moved. It wasn’t a recitation, like it has felt so often. I was letting my story tell me.

I realized how what I have always considered the “end” was not. For the first time I realized that this story, in its deepest voice, was calling for what was about to happen a week after: an epic road trip across the continent that unfolded into my romance with my Mediterranean lineage and territory. I smiled to myself.

The magic hadn’t disappeared; I just stopped listening for it.

My stories aren’t fragments or objects. They are voices, parts of a composition that can be arranged like a choir. Sometimes there are solos, but most times they are harmonies. When I am trapped in thought, I lose that awareness. My opportunity is to arrange them and offer them in service of the world around me.