permanent repeat affliction

Chapter 250

“ . . . a million stories on permanent repeat . . .”

This is my dad and his generation. My father-in-law too. I don’t want to join their ranks of a million stories on permanent repeat. Not 100% sure that its not age-affected, but I think mostly it is a posture of life, an attitude about what is happening to you, the narrative you tell yourself about yourself and your life.

I mean my dad still completely has all his mental faculties intact and functioning well. Hell his memory is better than mine! He, in fact I would argue, knows that he is repeating these one million stories, because he often starts the sentence, “I know I have told you a hundred times before . . . “ He knows. This is why I severely doubt that this permanent repeat affliction is an age-related one. I think it is an identity related thing.

What I mean is this, these constantly repeated stories of this person and that person and this difficulty and that abuse and those school experiences, and those bullies and that boss man and those working conditions and that hardship and those people and that unfairness and this danger and that hurt and so on and so forth, these are in the end, the stories that make up his understanding of himself. It is his culture expressed as an oral litany.

The problem with this million stories on permanent repeat is that makes it incredibly difficult to live any new stories, to have new experiences, to go new places, to become anything else than what you were in the past. If that is what you choose to be ok then, but don’t constantly share it with those who want to become more.