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The Victim, the Villain, the Hero, and the Guide: The Four Roles We Play in Life
LIVING A MEANING-FILLED STORY does not happen by accident. In fact, living a good story is a lot like writing one. When we read a great story, we donāt realize the hours of daydreaming, planning, fits, and false starts that went into what the reader may experience as a clean line of meaningful action.
Stories can be fun to write and fun to live, but the good ones take work.
Whether we like it or not, the lives we live are stories. Our lives have a beginning, middle, and end, and inside those three acts we play many roles. We are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, teammates, lovers, friends, and so much more. For many of us, the stories we live feel meaningful, interesting, and perhaps even inspired. For others, life feels as though the writer has lost the plot.
All of this begs the question, though: Who is writing our stories? Is God writing our stories? Is fate writing our stories? Is the government or our boss or the church writing our stories? I heard an interview with a physicist who espoused the possibility our stories actually donāt exist in time at all and that they have not yet started and are already done at the same time, or rather in the absence of time. Perhaps this is true but even if it is, Iām not sure how it helps me enjoy life any more or less. The truth is, we all have to live this life and experience it within the confines of time and Iām guessing we all want the experience to be as meaningful as possible.
For practical purposes, it is my position that the author of our stories is actually us. Perhaps the single greatest paradigm shift Iāve had as a human is this idea: I am writing my story and I alone have the responsibility to shape it into something meaningful.
I agree with James Allen, who said in his 1902 book As a Man Thinketh, āMan is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.ā
Here is a hard truth: if God is writing our stories, He isnāt doing a good job. I think we can all agree that some peopleās stories seem quite tragic and many of us have experienced our share of those tragedies. Whatās more, if God is writing our stories, He isnāt doing a fair job either. Some people are born privileged, and some are not. Some people die an untimely death, and others live in prime health until their credits roll.
What if, instead of writing our stories, God has invented the sunrise and sunset, the ocean and the desert, love and various forms of weather and then handed us the pen to write the proverbial rest?
What if we are much more responsible for the quality of our stories than we previously thought? What if any restlessness we feel about our lives is not in fact the fault of fate, but the fault of the writer themselves and that writer is us?
What if the broken nature of life is a fact, but the idea we can also create something meaningful in the midst of that brokenness is an equal fact?
None of this can be proven, of course, but does it need to be proven to be a useful paradigm?
Also, if I believe fate has all the power and so I sit neutral as my story wanders aimlessly around the page like it was dictated by a dispassionate imbecile, who should I blame? God? Fate? Steinbeck?
It seems to me that blaming myself is the most viable option. While that option may implicate me, it also offers me the most power to do something about it.
Regardless of who is writing our stories, it is a useful belief that we are the authors. And itās more than a useful belief: itās a fun belief. What if we get to partner with the fixed elements of life to carve out a little narrative of our own making?
If we are tired of life, what weāre really tired of is the story we are living inside of. And the great thing about being tired of our story is that stories can be edited. Stories can be fixed. Stories can go from dull to exciting, from rambling to focused, and from drudgery to read to exhilarating to live.
All we need to know to fix our stories are the principles that make a story meaningful. Then, if we apply those principles to our lives and stop handing our pen to fate, we can change our personal experience and in turn feel gratitude for its beauty, rather than resentment for its meaninglessness.
THE VICTIM: THE ONE WHO FEELS LIKE THEY HAVE NO WAY OUT
If you were a writer and came to me with a troubled story and said, āDon, this story isnāt working. Itās not interesting and I donāt know how to fix it,ā the first thing Iād look at is the lead character. Who is this story about and why isnāt this character working to make the story meaningful?
As I mentioned in the introduction, there are four major characters in nearly every story: the victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide. One thing that will ruin a story fast is if the heroāthe character that the story is aboutāacts like a victim.
You cannot have a lead character in a story that acts like a victim. This is true in stories and itās true in life. In fact, this is true in stories because itās true in life.
The reason a hero that acts like a victim ruins the story is because a story must move forward to be interesting. The hero must want something that is difficult and perhaps even frightening to achieve. This is the plot of nearly every inspirational story youāve ever read.
A victim, on the other hand, does not move forward or accept challenges. Instead, a victim gives up because they have come to believe they are doomed.
If you think about it, then, a person who surrenders their life to fate is the essence of a victim. By surrendering their story to fate, they allow fate to decide whether they succeed in a career, experience intimacy, cultivate a sense of gratitude, or set an example for their children. Fate, then, does a terrific job managing the scenery but little to push the plot of the hero forward. That job was the heroās to do and they didnāt do it.
Likely we all know a person or two who seems to live this way. Or worse, we may actually live this way ourselves!
Victims believe they are helpless and so flail until they are rescued.
Actual victims do exist and do in fact need to be rescued. Victimhood, however, is a temporary state. Once rescued, the better story is that we return to the heroic energy that moves our story forward.
The truth is, I used to be gloomy and sad myself. When I was in my midtwenties, I hit a stall. I rented a small room in a house in Portland, Oregon, and slept on a low-slung couch-bed that folded out to form a lumpy mattress on the floor. Iād wake in the morning and stare at the carpet just beyond my nose, wondering at the specks of cereal in the fibers.
It was more than twenty years ago. I lived in a house with a group of guys who were likely unimpressed with my lack of ambition and uninspired by my lack of action.
Iād handed my pen to fate and fate seemed to have been on a bender or perhaps distracted by the extra attention it was giving to the story of Justin Timberlake. (If fate does write our stories, and I cannot prove that it doesnāt, it did a terrific job with Justin Timberlakeās.) Regardless, the lack of plan wasnāt working. I was terribly unhealthy and sad and going nowhere. I believed life was hard and that fate was working against me.
Getting off a soft mattress on the floor isnāt as easy as getting out of a bed, so in the morning Iād lie there an extra hour, wondering if we had a vacuum cleaner. Then, Iād roll over onto my knees and push myself up with what were supposed to be arms. I wondered every morning if I had arthritis. I was twenty-six.
Because I surfaced so much victim energy, my career went nowhere. I knew I wanted to be a writer but I wasnāt doing anything about it. My story bogged down in inaction. I had yet to write a book or even try. I wanted to write, for sure, but in my victim energy I believed writing books was for people who were smarter than me or more disciplined or for people who spoke with a British accent. I did not believe I could actually become somebody who wrote books because fate determined who could write books and fate did not particularly like me. After all, fate had not given me a British accent.
Back when I was surfacing mostly victim energy, I remember riding a bus downtown to sell a few books to the used book buyers at Powellās. Powellās is a big bookstore in downtown Portland that will buy your library for about a third of what they can resell it for. I often sold my books so I could afford a slice of pizza. I remember riding the bus back home and seeing the line of homeless people outside the rescue mission. I was three days from having to pay rent that I didnāt have. I remember being afraid Iād be in that line the following week.
I didnāt know it at the time, but what I needed more than anything was a belief that I was actually the one writing my story, and then some kind of structure to help me live a story that would produce a sense of meaning. I needed to know my story could be edited and changed, and I needed principles I could use in the process.
Many of us likely identify with that season. Weāve all been through periods of hopelessness. Some make it out and others stay in the hopeless state. Most of us, though, choose a hybrid life. We move forward a little, maybe get a career and a spouse and some kids, but we continue to be halted by intrusions of victim energy. We only surface hero energy when we need to climb a rung in our career or clean ourselves up so we can find a mate and reproduce. But to the degree victim energy surfaces in our lives, our stories suffer a haunting restlessness.
Again, if a story is going to work, the hero must not surface victim energy. Victim energy is a belief that we are helpless, that we are doomed.
The point is this: even before we ask ourselves what our story is about, we have to ask ourselves what character we are playing within that story. If we are playing the victim or the villain, no amount of editing can help us. In the story of life, we will have played a bit part and our story will fail to gain narrative traction.
Be careful, though. If by reading these words we realize weāve been surfacing victim energy and shame ourselves, weāve immediately surfaced another kind of energy that will ruin our story. Weāve surfaced villain energy. A villain, you see, makes others small. A story about a villain wonāt deliver a sense of meaning either.
When we shame ourselves for acting like a victim, weāre manifesting a conversation in which the villain inside us attacks the victim inside us. This kind of inner dialogue does not create a great story either.
In fact, the two characters that will ruin our story the fastest are the victim and the villain.
THE VILLAIN: THE ONE WHO MAKES OTHERS SMALL
The second item on our checklist for fixing a bad story is to make sure the hero isnāt surfacing too much villain energy. Just like a hero that surfaces victim energy, a hero that surfaces villain energy will ruin the story too.
I donāt take for granted youāre going to stick with me just because you paid money for this book. Iāll warn you now: if you donāt like characters who feel jealous of others and belittle their lives and accomplishments, youāre not going to like me either because I did all those things.
Back before I learned how to edit my story, I defaulted to villain energy all the time.
Because I was sad about my sad life and jealous of people passing me by, I made other people small.
Specifically, the guys I lived with had lives that were moving forward, which made the fact mine was standing still feel all the worse. They were dating girls theyād later marry. They were starting jobs that would become careers. They were developing rhythms in life that would lead to success. I, on the other hand, was unable to find a beat.
So I took it out on them.
Mostly I was passive-aggressive. Iād make negative comments about the things they loved.
āWatching soccer on television is a little like watching fish in an aquarium, donāt you think?ā
One time they made a rule that nobody could leave their dishes in the sink. They made that rule mostly because I left dishes in the sink. One morning when I woke up and the house was empty, I saw that the guys hadnāt cleaned up after breakfast, so I put the dirty dishes in their beds. Note that the other guys had beds.
As Iāve already said, villains try to make other people small. Looking back, thatās what I was doing. I felt so small that I needed other people to be smaller so I could feel big. I needed their girlfriends to be uninteresting and their jobs to be a joke.
Donāt hate on the villain ...