Ripples #960: Your Emerging Story.
Oct 16, 2017
PEBBLE
How are you tending to the emerging story of your life?
-Carol Hegedus
shared by David in Myrtle Beach, SC
BOULDER
Life is like a novel. It is full of chapters, people, and adventure. It has a beginning and an end, it has a plot and a story to tell. But it is up to us to make it an award winning novel or just another book on the shelf.
-John Barber (AJ’s Dad)
shared by AJ in Florida
PONDER
Greetings from the road! I’m wrapping up a short trip east to help the Pennsylvania Library Association kick off their annual conference (a quick shout out to them and also Procter & Gamble’s Women in Innovation who I also spent some time with).
Besides sharing some tips to help PaLA get the most out of their time together, I made sure to thank them for helping so many people in so many communities and campuses and organizations to fall in love with reading.**
I also invited them to think about their lives as stories that are still being written and edited. I reminded them that we may not always get to choose how the plot of our own story unfolds, but we have a great deal of input about where our stories take us. And at any point we can choose to make our story more interesting and more meaningful with conscious choices about how to frame our story and most importantly what the main character, the HERO of our story should do next.
I hope your story is emerging in a way that provides lots of opportunities for joy and and meaning and growth. I hope that some of your chapters are easier than your toughest ones. And I hope you find the courage and the strength to handle the unexpected plot twists with grace and with flair. Keep writing!
Peace,
Paul
The Ripples Guy
**P.S. Of course, libraries have always been more than book depositories. Libraries are town halls where we gather together to discuss the topics of the day so we can grow as individuals and communities; they are sanctuaries of solitude where we can temporarily withdrawal from the concerns of the day; they are amusement parks where we can experience delight and pure, unadulterated joy; they are travel agencies, where we can plan visits to faraway corners of our planet, and they are also dream factories where we fantasize about journeys to places that are almost beyond our imagination. Libraries are SCHOOLS, of course, but they are really temples of knowledge and wisdom, and Librarians remain indispensable to our society as educators, technologists, guides, and perhaps most importantly as curators of information and culture that allow us to understand each other, and the world, and ourselves.