How Dying Showed Me the Power of Stories

[Music]

every day you wake up

is a new page in the narrative of your

life you

right away at this narrative hoping once

you write that final page

it’ll be a book worth reading on

september 13th

2018 my book nearly came to an abrupt

hall

for me that day is nothing short of a

miracle

i started that thursday feeling pretty

stressed as i was going to be giving an

interview for our local news station

about something i was doing at school

while i was just riddled with nerves i

knew i needed to put my best foot

forward and i was prepared to nail that

interview

however it was cut short as i suddenly

collapsed on the floor during the middle

of it

over the next few days i was in a coma

until i eventually woke up with

family in my bedside tell me i had what

doctors called a

sudden cardiac death

with no rhyme or reason as to why this

happened i was just

left dumbfounded and hopelessly lost in

my sense of security over my life

everything around me came to a

standstill nothing really mattered

except

trying to figure out how to move forward

from this

family and friends came to see me and

honestly i could have been happier to

have so much

love and support around me but the fact

of the matter was i was still lost and

unsure of the future ahead of me

wondering if i would just take a step

outside the hospital and die right there

go on my high school graduation stage

and die right there

my boredom and hazy days led me to a

video game that gave me some semblance

of order and the chaos that was my life

it was a game called dead cells a 2d

action game where you fight through

multiple levels of monsters until you

get to the end and face the main boss

seems simple enough but

the catch was that if you died anywhere

in the game you had to start all the way

over from the beginning

well you got to keep a few power-ups you

had no checkpoints

you lost all your weapons and you were

left back at square one

well you could have always just given up

on this challenge you would have beaten

the game and you had to overcome these

various obstacles and even death itself

just to win

i saw this game as a metaphor for my

life right there in the hospital

if i was ever going to keep persevering

and fighting for the life that i wanted

i needed to

envision what was ahead of me it was

stories like in this game that consumed

me as a child whether they were epic

battles of cosmic proportions or

fables of woodland creatures stories had

a profound influence on the way that i

thought

and i made plenty of my own stories as

well i sometimes just get lost in these

stories always trying to pull some of

the best aspects of

from the of them back into my real life

as stories truly shaped how i thought as

a child it only made sense that when i

nearly died i would

turn to them for guidance and dealing

with struggles i just couldn’t quite

figure out

but i always wondered why why was these

stories whether they came from popular

culture

or daydreams helped motivate me had such

an influence on my life

an article from psychodynamic practice

investigates just how audio-visual

mediums such as film

television and video games could affect

how the mind operates and deals with

reality

during psychoanalysis therapists noticed

that many of the ideas presented in

these fictional realities came up

frequently

and they begin to delve in all sorts of

details of the patient seiken its

relationship to pop culture narratives

therapists notice that much of the

content in this entertainment material

was being used by their patients to help

them deal with the world around them

now our minds predominantly operate

visually so when pop culture content

which is primarily visual

makes its way into our lives it can have

a profound influence on the way that we

think

and this is especially true for children

who would

maybe like myself who would pull bits

and pieces from the stories around them

and

they also think and dream in more visual

ways

now when i almost died i was distraught

sad and

scared of the future but instead of

reinforcing those bad thoughts with

more bad thoughts i look to more

inspiring stories just like that video

game

and i told myself my own stories as well

the story of my life and

how i would move forward from what

happened to me i

told myself stories when i would get out

of bed

i would use my family and friends for

support i’d

go back to high school sooner than

people would think

i’d keep trying for scholarships i’d

graduate high school with good grades

i’d go to college and most importantly

i’d have a good life

now i wasn’t necessarily telling myself

stories where and i felt like i was

captain america and i was just whacking

people with a shield

no i was using these stories as a

reminder a reinforcer of the thoughts

that i needed to have

if i ever wanted to pull myself out of a

mental right it’s like how they say

surround yourself with people you aspire

to be like well the same holds true for

stories as well

you must invite stories into your life

that parallel ideas or lessons that you

want to incorporate into your own

and this idea this concept of taking in

all these ideas and stories and

using them in your daily reality this is

a process that’s known as positive

constructive daydreaming

positive constructive daydreaming is

essentially all the internal content

that you manifest yourself

that benefits your way of thinking

according to an article from frontiers

in psychology

positive constructive daydreaming has

the potential to alter the mind towards

certain positive functions

of those there are four key ones which

include future planning

creativity attention cycling and dish

habituation

future planning entails periods of

self-reflection but can be severely

stunted by just

general unhappy moods creativity

involves

problem solving and incubating your

thoughts essentially learning from

failure in order to move forward with

your goals

attention cycling aims to advance your

way of thinking by rotating through

various streams of thought

think of it like tuning into a different

radio station to get a different type of

music

and this habituation which aims to

advance your performance on a task by

taking short breaks

now these constructive functions that

are derived from positive constructive

daydreaming

showcase the power that stories can have

on our minds

but how exactly do we constructively

daydream in a way that is both

positive and meaningful to our lives

well

dr sereni pile a harvard trained

psychiatrist explains in his book

tinker dabble doodle try just how to go

about doing that

first and foremost you should set out a

time to daydream to avoiding

getting distracted or unrested during

your mental expedition

focus on your internal dialogue and

reduce those distractions around you

maybe simply by closing your eyes or

moving to a calmer environment

try and do a simple task that doesn’t

use all too much brain power

or simply do not nothing at all if that

works better

and try to understand that the mind may

try and resist this daydreaming process

but

take it one step at a time relax and let

your mind guide you towards your

daydreaming goals

it’s with knowing how to utilize this

positive constructive daydream process

that you can begin to utilize the power

of stories for the betterment of your

life

to give you an example of this when i

went to the theater a few years ago to

see the movie bohemian rhapsody the

story of the famous singer freddie

mercury i took a great deal from it

from the actor’s portrayal i saw the

passion who craft freddie mercury had is

presence on stage and his ability to

captivate not only a live audience

but nearly the entire world and that

resonated powerfully with me

from this i learned sort of

actions things i could incorporate back

in my real life such as

how to give a speech with a bit more

character or how to walk with more

confidence

and the story of freddie mercury

ultimately made its way into my

constructive daydreams

and my life

another story that had a profound impact

on me was one that i read when i was in

middle school

it was called the giver the giver told

the story of a young boy who lived in a

dystopian society

devoid of all the memories that made the

world itself

and these were things such as music

art the feeling on a cool summer day or

the

harsh pain of a sunburn the boy

eventually learned of all these

memories shielded away from society and

left his own to find a better one

this gave a younger more timid version

of myself the hearty spirit to learn all

that i could about the world around me

and of course there’s a story of a game

called dead cells

which reminded me i have a lot of life

left in me and i need to keep pushing

and fighting for the life that i want

it’s with all these stories that i’m

just captivated by copious amounts of

ideas and

lessons that i can bring back into my

real life because

after nearly dying i want to live i

want to experience all that the world

has to offer and make my life

one to remember when they tell stories

about years to come

there’s a man by the name of ervin yolom

an american psychiatrist who once said

someday soon perhaps in 40 years there

will be no one alive who has ever known

me

that is when i will truly be dead when i

exist in no one’s memory

i thought a lot about how someone very

old is the last living individual

to have known some person or cluster of

people

when that person dies the whole cluster

dies too

vanishes from the holy memory i wonder

who that person will be for me

whose death will make me truly dead

now it’s inevitable that one day we will

all die

but it’s by knowing how to utilize the

stories all around us that we all make

ourselves

implementing them through positive

constructive daydreams that we can make

our story

and our lives want to remember one

they’ll certainly talk about

years to come thank you

you