In the beginning we were told fantastic stories that captured our new imaginations long enough to teach us lessons about our world. Whether in fairy tales, comic books, or Sunday school, we took these stories to heart and lived vicariously through their protagonists. These stories' morals were told to us in plain terms in order to simplify the complicated questions of right and wrong so that we might learn to make good choices without having to feel the painful consequences of folly.
I was never able to outgrow the allure of such stories but I have had mixed results when it comes to applying their lessons to real-life situations. It would seem that these enchanted worlds that we took to heart as children are only effective if you don't know that they're 'make-believe'. Once we find out there are no magic beans, or superpowers, we tend to loosen our adherence to what we once thought was invaluable knowledge. When we begin to trust our own experiences more than fables we enter a more complicated world.
These pictures are projections of my own story through the lens of more fantastic narratives. Likewise, the lessons those tales taught are reflected by my choices. But their general, one-size-fits-all messages have been contaminated by accumulated personal experiences and thus changed into something far more ambiguous. After we realize the inability of these tales to provide actual comfort in the moments it is most needed we are left to write our own stories as best we can. But without an understanding of our own origin or how things will wind up our best efforts can only produce a steady nonlinear progression from one stage of uncertainty to another.
This doesn't keep us from trying though. Our appetite for these lessons was instilled at such an early age that even after discovering that their meanings are unreliable we still search for the same kind of meaning in our own life story. Unable to deny that craving but disenchanted by the sealed narratives of our youth we look to our own life story knowing it is the only one that can hold our attention until the end.
