The Story is the Real [Adventure]

[Adventure 261]

For my entire life, when I'm reading a book or watching a tv show or movie and I take a break, I've felt like I'm leaving the characters in a kind of limbo. That, until I return, they are stuck in the not knowing or the horrible circumstance or in the place they are, unable to move forward. 

These characters are held suspended in time and space. 

I know they're just stories. Just images on a screen or words on a page. Nevertheless, when things get stressful in a story and I have to leave the characters to do something else, I feel this pull in the back of my mind, an unease that something isn't right - and then I remember that lives are in suspended animation until I return. 

This is why reading doesn't help me fall asleep - I'm invested in the story, feeling the need to keep time moving forward for those intricate to the story. And why cliffhangers are incredibly stressful. 

I've been feeling a sense of unease lately. I think a lot of it has to do with the feeling that life in many ways is still paused ... or that we've taken a break at the end of a chapter and then moved on to a totally different book.

But in reality, the next chapter of the book is just starkly different from the chapter where we left off. We have learned that we can't count on others to keep us safe and help the world get back to some semblance of what it was before covid-19. In fact, we are in charge of writing this next chapter, and the one after, and the one after that. And what happens is up to us. We can continue ignoring, on some level, what is actually happening and what really needs to be done, or we can move forward keeping ourselves as safe as possible while finding ways to live life fully and lovingly.