What's the point of being in a story at all?
Why can’t we just all awaken within the story, return to storyteller-ness, and thereby “go home,” so to speak? Why does the storyteller need to send the avatar through any kind of hardship at all, in a story?
In other words, why can’t the story just be like this?:
Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to fly.
She decided she could fly.
She did fly.
The end.
Why? Oh, why?
Well…
Please read the above story again. Personally, I wouldn’t even call that a story. But, okay, maybe some of us define the word “story” differently, so let’s just say that it is a story, and consider what it does.
What does it do?
Nothing!
There is no fun. There is no meaning. There is nothing. ChatGPT (from the year 2024) could write a million stories like this. Stories like this are perfectly logical. They make total sense. Hey, a girl wanted to fly and she flew! The end! How sensible! And it does nothing. Absolutely nothing. I daresay, none of us would waste any of our existence on a story that looks like the above.
Nevertheless, sometimes, we say, or act as if, we want to live this kind of story. We claim that we want to jump from “I want money” to “I have money” in the avatar world.
Why? The main reason, I believe, is that we tend to be more identified with the avatar than with the storyteller.
From the avatar’s position, resources are limited. The infinite blank page has been “set in stone.” Reality seems very solid, to the avatar. Unless something happens very quickly, it feels that it cannot survive, or that it will have difficulties in surviving, or, in other ways, suffer.
Meanwhile, from the storyteller’s position, it is perfectly clear that she could write anything—literally anything.
However, recall: the storyteller is the avatar and the avatar is the storyteller.
And the storyteller isn’t some cruel force that subjects the avatar to a torturous existence. Nay, the storyteller needs the avatar as much as the avatar needs the storyteller. And, perhaps more importantly, an avatar may or may not want the storyteller, but for the storyteller? If a storyteller were to not want the avatar and still create the avatar, it would be an understatement to say that such a storyteller is very, highly, much intensely, fiercely stupid.
Please look around.
No matter how sucky your situation is at any given timespace, no entity in the entire universe would bother to create that situation unless out of extreme, deep interest: unconditional love. (More on what “unconditional love” means, in a later post.) Whoever/whatever created your situation, they/it did it for you. Even if you may see your situation as a sucky one, it's not like your surroundings are in 128p while those who you deem to be in lucky situations dwell in 4k resolution. No, regardless of the content and your interpretation of the content of your story, there is no denying that your "background set," so to speak, is as flawlessly perfect as any other person's.
Consider a war movie. Or a dystopian game. Or a noir comic book.
How do the characters in such stories see the world? Usually, as a bleak, terrifying place—which is absolutely true, from the characters’ position.
Versus, how do the creators view those story worlds? Oh, the creators adore their worlds, of course! Even if some people, who live in the same dimension as those creators, hate those stories, who cares? The creators adore them. And there are fans of such stories. Some fans love those stories so much, they cosplay those characters and want to live in that world—that very world where we know, full well, that characters are undergoing hardships.
Why?
Because it’s about experiencing things.
Now, let’s imagine a story with the same sucky settings: war, dystopia, noir, or perhaps our very own immediate surroundings.
What if that character/avatar were to suddenly state in their POV: I fully realize that you—the creator/storyteller—are experiencing this world through me. I realize that I am you and you are me.
As stated in the previous post, this is when it becomes both impossible and unnecessary for the storyteller to unfold hardships for the avatar. This isn’t to say that hardships will not happen. We cannot lie to ourselves. We cannot “wink wink, let’s pretend I know I’m the storyteller” and try to get out of challenges. When we truly, deeply, absolutely know that we are the storyteller (each of our own, respectively), we don’t “try to get out” of anything. This doesn’t mean that we wallow in suffering. This doesn’t mean that we fall in love with getting tortured. It means that we know that the world wasn’t thrown at us to punish us; it was unfolded for us as a gift.
That sucky situation—war/dystopia/noir, you name it—where heroes are born.
Again, as mentioned in the previous post, it’s important to accept that for the avatar, it goshdarn sucks. We should not make the avatar unfeel what it feels. In fact, that’s the opposite of what we do in The Storyteller’s Eye. The avatar’s unfeeling things defeats the purpose of writing a story, at all.
Because, again, what’s the point of a story?
The experience.
The storyteller could have written:
Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to fly.
She decided she could fly.
She did fly.
The end.
But she didn’t.
Why?
Because she wants to experience herself. And the avatar also experiences itself. She is the avatar, the avatar is she.
By the way, the same applies to the case in which the inspiration to fly was rejected:
Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to fly.
She decided she couldn’t fly.
She didn’t fly.
The end.
Even when the girl rejects the inspiration, there is a lot to experience on the way to her not flying. And the storyteller will unfold that story for the girl.
That said, despite the avatar’s situation sucking to the highest degree, we can, at the same time, see things from the storyteller’s position. That is what our imagination is capable of. And because the POV is the avatar’s only reality—and also, the storyteller’s only reality for that avatar—whatever goes in the POV is the truth, no matter what. If we say we are the storyteller, then we are.
This isn’t something where there can be external proof. It’s not possible, by definition. One’s POV is one’s reality. Whatever one accepts is in one’s reality. Whatever one rejects isn’t in one’s reality. No one else can come to you and tell you that reality is such and such—not truly. Because, even their telling you will need to be accepted or rejected by you.
Have you ever noticed that?
Only you can determine what’s in your POV.
We are here to know what we are. (“What” is a closer description of our identity than “who.” At least this is the case in English. “Who” implies that an entity is a human or some equivalent of a human; “what” can be anything. And we are anything, as the storyteller.)
We are here to know what we are—as the avatar’s specialized POV…
…but also, through that specialization, we can directly/indirectly experience what it is like to be unspecialized.
How much emphasis you put on specialization or de-specialization is up to you. They work together. You can pick the balance—the desired ratio. This worldview will support both extremes, with the caveat that, even in the extremes, both avatar and storyteller do exist. In other words, this isn’t a worldview where the avatar completely disappears or the storyteller completely disappears.
At any rate, challenges are simply tools to show us what we are. They are opportunities in which many inspirations arise, for us to accept or reject.
As we identify more and more with the storyteller (my assumption is that most of us start out identifying more with the avatar, so we need to identify more with the storyteller), we can see challenges for what they are: they are part of a dream.
This is a dream.
This life is no different from a dream.
The worldview tag is best read in this order. The later posts build on the earlier posts.