Whatever stories you read - in any book from the bible to the latest fiction - you will notice that each is a story of people freeing themselves of something or someone.
Fables, legends or stories based on true lives are all about someone going from slavery to freedom. The difference is made between the people who face struggle and become a different person who succeeds and the individuals who fail to change and end up in a place of similar misery. We all love the stories of someone who persists and changes his or her circumstances even through the greatest obstacles. Of course sometimes we also like to read about the people who fail to change because it makes us feel better about our own failure and seems therefore more realistic to us.
There the two types of stories: warnings and examples.
Examples are stories of people who succeeded and found their happy end with a character that is stronger than anything they experienced before. When you read their story or see the movie, you know they will never go back to their old way of being because they made such a shift in character. Examples are people who stop avoiding issues and start showing courage to face struggle head on. Or individuals who go from being cynical to becoming believers. Whatever the shift of behavior is, it makes a great difference in who they are, it usually involves risk and work but in the end it will create possibility and opportunity that was never there before.
Warnings on the other hand are the stories of people who fail to transform and end up the same or worse than they started. We all know the stories in movies, often called dramas, where the hero finds himself facing an opponent but instead of great change, they end up being the same person they were before. A recent example is the movie young adult, where Charlize Theron lives a life of ignorance and avoidance in Minnesota, faces a chain of situations in her hometown but instead of becoming a different person in the end she goes back to her old way of being.
Everyone has to decide what they want to be - an example or a warning. We will all face struggle in our lives but it will be up to us if change our approach and show courage, persistence and empathy - whatever virtues we have failed to display before.
What are the stories that you find inspiring? What do you want your story to be about?
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