scripts

While hanging out at Barnes and Noble looking for a self-help book and generally wasting time and relaxing, I opened a book to a statement that suggested getting over depression by giving up the scripts – the ones that we all inheirit from society and family and fairy tales and movies and stories. Because living those scripts is what makes you unhappy.

I spent some time years ago giving up dreams I had about how life should be. A couple of dreams were painful to give up because they were so nice and sweet. But they were never going to happen so there was no point in making myself miserable over them. Today I've been thinking about how my life would be without scripts. I know about expectations and how they can destroy a normally good experience for me. But the scripts thing is totally different somehow.

These words – scripts, dreams, expectations – are all descriptions of the same thing yet somehow each word lights up a different aspect of the meaning. Scripts bother me most because they are fixed and immutable. They are like tiny programs running my life for me. Without the scripts I see just what is in front of me. Not bad but I prefer the long view. Not sure what I'm going to do about that.

What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do. – Kurt Vonnegut
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living somone else's life. – Steve Jobs