Thanksgiving Day was the last decent weather day we had through the long holiday weekend. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all wet, windy and cold. Most decidedly cold for the wife. Forty degree weather in this neck of the woods qualifies as winter, not fall, so throw in the rain and the wife was miserable.

At sunset on Sunday the clouds finally began to break and Monday dawned clear and sunny. So as I trudged back to work and my temporary office in our training room as we are in the process of adding new offices around the facility, the weather made me want to play hooky.

I put the long rainy hI think we live by ours to good use though. I picked up the latest Robert Ludlum novel in travels early on Friday so as the weather set in I set to reading. Late last night I finished the book. Enjoyable Ludlum escapism, just what the weather ordered. I also found this nugget of dialog in the mouth of one of the main characters…

I think we live by stories. We organize our lives around stories. You ask me who I am, I tell you a story, But stories change…There’s no experience outside of narrative.

Robert Ludlum, The Bancroft Strategy

When I sat down with Fred First a couple of weeks ago I was telling him that the main attraction I felt to the western North Carolina area we visit was the stories. The stories of place, the stories of people, the stories of family long gone to other areas.

One of the things that now attracts me to Floyd County, Virginia is the stories being told there. I “met” Doug and David and Marie Freeman and Harley and all of their friends through the stories they told on their blogs. I “met” Fred through the blog of Marie Freeman, whose pain I share this week over the lose of her companion Harley. I “met’ Marie because of her connection to the location of the stories I had fallen in love with…And so the story circle continues, as it has for generations.

One of my beliefs, one that has developed over the past few years, is that we all live in our own myth. We are the main character in the story of our life. But we do not write this story, this myth, by ourselves. This particular story is written by all of the people we interact with in our life. The myth we live is the story reflected back at us by the mirror of our family and friends. We are what we are because we try to live up to that image, we try to be what others see. We only control the story in the broadest of strokes of the pen. Our actions are read and told through the pages of other peoples stories…They write the myth of our lives.

Our control of this is only as big as the guiding principles we live by. But these principles are seen through the lens of others cameras, recorded on the tape of others memories, written on the pages of others life stories. These interactions make what we are into what we become…In others minds, our myths…

Pardon the ramble. I knew not where this was going when I started it…So add another chapter to my “myth”…