We Are The Stories We Tell About Ourselves

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”  ---William Arthur Ward

 I have my heroes.  They are my heroes because the life stories they tell about themselves are the stories I wish to tell of myself.  To become that good that they are.

Perhaps my greatest bucket list wish is to tell my own story as an expression without attribution of the collective life stories of those I admire most.  Superficially, that would conclude that my character is no more than assuming the role and act out a retelling of the essential admired stories of those I chose.  At times I look internally, deeply, to see that I am a composite of all those that I have loved and what I have loved most in each of them is carried not just in my heart but in my mind-self.  Their story but mine to retell of myself, my way in tribute to them.
  
I find this to be true when I say that I have been inspired by the stories of those that mean the most to me.  I believe that their stories, their lives, were formed by those that inspired them.  Inspiration only therefore lives if it is passed on to others and maybe that is as important as passing on the gift of life.  Inspiration to be good, to do good, even be and do the best.  Or simply better.  

Inspiration is the breathing in and out of the first breath of life we were given.  We might have been kick-started by something divine to take the first breath but it was a loving slap on the butt by another human being that welcomed us into the world of a second breath and the expression of love thru inspiration that kept us and others going until and beyond our last breath of expiration.

"Breathe In - Breathe Out --Repeat After Me".........Maybe a good title for a story I must write!   Last line:   Continue inspiring in memory of me and my last breath will never expire.

My story has been lived in three segments.  Steps in the journey were heroes encountered, left behind, their inspiration carried forward with no load in the knapsack.  Growing up for 22 years, which means until college graduation.  Navy career for 20 years.  A relationship with my hero for 20 years.  A hero initially for what she did and continued to do but then for who she was.  Her life story about herself until I shared her last breath.  More heroes followed on the journey.

Wow!  What was the inspiration this morning for all of this story!!!!  It was this link:  The Myths We Soldiers Tell About Ourselves.  It took me back to my Navy days and experiences.  Stories of heroes from that time that inspired me with honor, courage, and moral goodness.  The counter stories of those lacking in these attributes.  Stories that I would die to avoid telling about myself.  Navy days were only prelude to the next chapter.  It got even better.

The longer story of my life is that I shared the life story of my hero and doing things that were an expression of her story.  She once told me to never call her my hero again.  I may have said the same if she had called me hero.  She did not see herself that way nor did I.  In the end I said it about her but it was always true.

Maybe we are heroes of our own stories but love causes whatever that hero thing is to be expressed in inspiration for the life story of another.  That is what gives love a history story and writes the greatest stories yet to be written.

My memorial to the one that inspired me is a single word story carved into the heart of a boulder by Phil's Trail.  A tribute to her but a reminder to me of the story that I came to tell.  To learn how to tell better by living it.

It is not the hero we need but their inspiration.  Having both intimately in our lives is having it all.