22) The Gist of It

What do you think of someone who tells a story, but gets all the details wrong?  Then when you confront them on it, and sometimes you do, they go “ok, but I got the gist of it”.

It’s like that telephone game we played as kids, where you whisper a phrase around the table and see how different it is on arrival from when it started.  I guess for some reason we take in the facts and meanings differently, some things important, others not, and then depending on our creative ability, delete and add some fact or meaning, of course trying to keep the gist of the phrase, before whispering it in the next ear.

All the time Yani is correcting my facts (and she is usually right), but I always say, “but I kept the gist of it.”  Sometimes she admits that I missed the point entirely.

So is that what we do all the time, not just in a game?  I mean our very life-story is the result of deleting and adding facts and meanings, regardless of what we say the story is.  Some of us don’t mind deceiving others, so we don’t mind modifying the facts to suit our needs, a better story, don’t you think? 

But what about keeping the gist of our story?  Probably not that important either, depending on whether we have ever thought about it, whether we understand it, or some other more important need supersedes it.

So, what is the gist of my life?  Do I really want to put this out to you now?  No, not now.  But an interesting idea to explore.

Let’s just metashift a bit here and talk about the general concept of the gist of our lives. As the old saying goes, we are 3 people:  1) who you see me as, 2) how I see myself, and 3) the facts.

What are the “facts”?  Obviously I can’t tell you about myself, because that would involve #2 (my view) trying to influence #1 (your view).  How about court records?  That’s pretty good, sometimes not the truth, but usually pretty clear cut, time and place and incident.  How about writings about us?  Definitely #1 how the writer sees us.  An interpretation.

Interesting.  How do we decide which writer is telling the truth?  Well getting the facts right is a first step, if they are checkable.  Then it is the meaning attached.  Every good writer has somewhat of an agenda, putting a spin on the story, some elements more farfetched and others not.  A news journalist is not supposed to do that, but it is expected of a creative writer.

There have been several good writers who have put out fiction, a lot of books each.  And after reading a couple books, we get the gist of what they are saying.  Kurt Vonnegut, John Le Carre’, John Irving.

Apropos of what we are talking about, I particularly liked John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany”.  The meaning I took away from it was that we practice all of our lives to do something later which we don’t understand at the time, probably not such a dramatic achievement as in the book, hopefully.

But I have found it true of my life, the classes I took when young, the people I met, what they had to pass on to me.  An example is the class for learning typing when I was in high school, which later enabled me to write code quickly.  How about the early sailing which enabled me to, I think successfully, sail for 13 years in the Eastern Caribbean?  Wish I had taken a course on engines when I was young.   What happened?

Well there isn’t time to get everything, at least for me.  I had to decide which available course was going to be important later, even though I didn’t know that I was doing that.  Now I know.

Another proof for me that there does exist a higher consciousness.

You can say “random” if you want, but then, not you.  You wouldn’t be reading this if you thought that.

My big question these days is trying to figure out how it works.  See, I said “it”?  Should be “Who”?  And what does he want?  “He/She”!  What a problem for the English language!  I’ll just use either I feel at the moment with no suggestion of bias.

What does she want?  What does she want of me?  Why have I been allowed to survive this long?  What is my mission, if there is one?

Best thing to do, is to “ask”.  I read that recently.  So I tried, but got no voice speaking into my head.  That would be weird.  On the other hand, thoughts have been and are coming into my head which I don’t know where they are coming from, recognized only recently to be the directions from someone higher.  Maybe “directions” is too harsh a word.  How about “help”?  Much kinder.  Help to do what?  To be myself maybe?  Or to pass on something to another?  Again back to the previous questions?

John Irving says we can’t know, just keep practicing for the big event.  I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who had a Tralfamadorian state that “Only on Earth is there any talk of free will”. 

If I am living a story, then whose story is it?  Not important that I know, evidently. 

If we do have free will, then it would be to either accept the story or to disagree with it.  If we don’t have “free won’t”, then it doesn’t matter what we decide.  But I don’t believe that.  Every once in a while we have to put our 2 cents in.  I guess I think of it more as a collaboration.  She and me.

It’s like when we miss the turn and our phone direction lady adjusts quite easily to still get us there, we won’t arrive as soon, but still on the way.  And I think she does it without making us feel guilty.  “Oh man, how did you do that?  I told you to turn left back there.”  My friend Nick calls his phone lady, “Maze”, after the hot woman in the “Lucifer” TV series.  How about this for a future invention, a phone lady with an attitude!  How about a New Jersey voice?  A mother figure.  Feel enough guilt yet?  Need a switch to change her attitude.

So what is the name of my phone lady? And I don’t mean my physical phone.   I did come up with the name “Rod” recently, but now that I think of it, I would prefer a woman’s name.  And a name doesn’t mean much.  Not the essence of a person.  The name is only a convenient way of differentiating one person from another.  Maybe a more accurate naming system is one where the name has meaning?  Like the American Indians.  A name given to a child is determined by what animal was doing what at a significant moment.  And then you could choose your own name at 14.  Now that is a heavy decision!

Anyway, I ramble.  I’ll have to decide on a name.  Because then we can begin to talk if I have a name for her.  See, it’s definitely “her” now.  Actually I think of her as male also.  A combination of the two.

A lot of people talk to “Jesus”, but like I said, what’s in a name?  It’s the process.

I’d call her “Yani”, but my wife already has that name.

My wife!  Is she going to like that another woman is actually running me?  Ooh?  Well, I think she knows and is cool with it.  How about an Indian name?  First thing I see when I look out are bright lights on the tree branches.  “Bright Light”.  Not feminine enough.  “Wooly Bear”?  Maybe a Biblical name? 

I like “Gloria”.  But too feminine.  I think of my guide as being both genders. 

I know, how about “Meta”?  Pronounced May-Ta or Mea-Ta.  Doesn’t matter.  "Moving up".  Meta and Chris, Chris and Meta. And Yani and Chris and Meta and Yani’s Martha, if she is still around.  Yani has seen Martha on the boat, old skin and long straight white hair, looks like an American Indian.

Our stories continue.

I guess you get the gist of that.