Somehow as a child, I had long held these rigid boundaries between fact and fable and it seemed always that stories that you read about or see in movies do not intersect with our everyday life trajectories. And now as I have learnt my lessons, I know that i couldn't have been farther from truth !
Our lives are these growing, tangled web of stories and it is only a question of knowing the people around you an the stories that they have lived and are living. There are stories all around us - stories of war and struggle, of exile and escape, of struggle with disease and death, of struggle with poverty and fear, stories of love and hate, envy and anger.
Stories that are impregnated with truth even as they embolden the people who have lived through them. Stories that show human courage and strength even as it reveals our foibles and our weaknesses. Over the past few weeks, I have heard of stories of escape from the Vietnam war followed by a struggle with poverty to rebuild a life in exile. I have heard of battles with cancer as family members use every skill at their disposal to dissect the disease at hand. I have seen a woman working hard in the labortaory trying to find a cure for the cystic fibrosis that afflicts her husband. I have seen unity and harmony in strangers and a strange separation in couples. I have seen relationships unravel like a blanket that frays I have seen cover-ups and close-ups... I have seen some lives and heard some stories and all these experiences have completely eroded those naive illusions that i had about the separation between fact and fiction. I now see every life as a story in making and i only wonder if i will ever get to hear it. I now see every person as a potential story teller and I am left wondering what the end is of these many stories that are weaving themselves into the fabric of my life.
Will I ever read the whole story ? Will I become a part of these stories ? I guess, only time will tell us the answer.
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