Telling Tales: (Or Putting the Plural in Pluralism)
Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 681-695, 1985
8 Pages Posted: 30 Mar 2010
Date Written: 1985
Abstract
We are all tellers of tales. Our lives are a struggle to imagine and enact the best stories we can. These stories run from the sublime to the ridiculous, the ecstatic to the elegaic, the hopeful to the fearful and the marvellous to the mundane. Only in our fantasies are we anywhere near free to indulge our dramatic imaginings to their fullest: even then we are not entirely free for we must dream within the historic experience of our life stories. In life, we are thrust into a work-in-progress. It is a sprawling performance that has countless scenes and a profusion of acts, often being performed simutaneously and repeatedly. Reality becomes congruent with these enactments of the habitual stories and stock tales of the community. To the extent that we get to write and enact our own lives, we must begin with and respond to the dramatic plot in which we find ourselves. The story of my life can never be disentangled from the community's story in which my story develops and gains significance. While we can never be free of the past or of our communal connections, we need not become slavish adherents to their perceived weight and hold. The future of the past is our present and continuing responsibility. The past has passed and was what it was, but it is up to us to decide what it will become.
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