Every Story Has Been Told
no story is finished being told
When Rachel Held Evans published Evolving in Monkey Town (which later became Faith Unraveled), I remember feeling angry with myself for letting someone else tell my story (and tell it better!). I remember thinking, “Well, there’s no point to writing my story now. The story has been told.” Khalas. Finished. I even remember the dusty couch I was sitting on in Djibouti when I thought this, and how sweat dribbled down my back, pooling at my waistband.
The story has been told.
Later, one of my sisters said, “Rachel, you need to write Evolving in Djibouti Town.” I told her I already had a file on my computer with that exact title. The drafts in that folder eventually became Pillars, my book that tells a story similar to but in no way the same as Rachel Held Evans’s story.
When I felt angry and disappointed that someone else had gotten to my story before I had, when I told myself, “That story has been told” with the unspoken but assumed next words being, “give it up, loser, you have nothing to add here”1, I was wrong. So, so wrong.
And also right. Partly, partly right.
There is nothing new under the sun.
What else can still be written about falling in and out of love? What else could possibly be written about cancer or car accidents or divorce or war? What still remains to be said about running marathons and raising children and dull office coworkers turned into superheroes? Is there anything not written already about pets and travel and barbecue and outer space and goblins and pregnancy and religion? What can be added to the tomes of grief, delight, rage, envy, murder, politics, or joy?
Every story has been told but no story is finished.
Every story is a retelling and no story is done being told.
We have written every story about heartbreak and revenge but we are not done telling the story of heartbreak and revenge.
We have written every story about marathons but we have not finished the story of marathons.
We have written every story about grief but we will never finish the story of grief.
There is nothing new under the sun but there is also nothing finished under the sun. There is nothing wholly new, wholly unlinked to anything gone before. But, there are always new angles and new examples and new characters and new generations and new twists and new combinations.
We have told every story that can be told but we have not plumbed to the depth of every story that can be told.
The work of the creative is not to search out the one story that has not yet been told.
The work of the creative is to join the stream of what has gone before and contribute to what is being made, to what is yet to be made.
The work of the creative is to participate in the ongoing work of telling every story again, deeper, more.
What story drives you into needing to know or tell it deeper? What universal story has gripped you and is not yet done, and you know your work now is to dig into it, to keep telling it?
Yes, I’ve needed to grow in self-compassion and kinder self-talk. Work in progress.
Agree, very encouraging, thank you.
very encouraging.