Gathering Material

Even though its pretty early to be in bed on a saturday night (11 pm), I am awake watching a movie, Being Flynn. The movie is about a lot of differnet things, but it is written from the perspective of a writer. And one phrase keeps sticking out to me, “Life is about gathering material”.

Makes me wonder if I am making enough effort to gather the material of life that I hoped to have. I became an anthropologist, partly to help tell the stories of people that may not have their stories told. Now I feel that I have grown lazy in that pursuit. I have learned a lot, and grown a lot, but what about the stories out there in the world? What is happening with them?

More importantly, am I living a wide enough life? One of the reasons I wanted to become a software engineer was to change my life. I am in the very beginning stages of doing that. Part of changing my life means, for me, to be authentic to my true self. My true self always saw that I would be an entrepreneur, that I would be a writer, that I would live part time in South or central america, and that I would make a difference in the world. That means being out there in the world, being aware, gatheirng material.

In the movie, the characters use their vocation as a means of learning about how people live in the world. Its their way of drawing reality from life to inject into the stories they write. I don’t think that I have ever considered that. My job has always been about my contributions in the world, and not about witnessing the contributions of others. Now I feel compelled to consider this idea.

I don’t know how it will manifest, but I do know that I would like to be more present in the world. I would like to be a storyteller, and I would like to be a contributor and a witness. I would like to have the presence of mind to gather material and the bravery to tell about it.

“We all need to create the story that will make sense of our lives…” I want some of that.