This post was written by Quincy Godwin after his year as a Global Gap Year Fellow.
Sometimes you tell a story that sucks.
It’s an inevitable scenario stimulated by the warm glow of a loose conversation that knows no boundaries: Everyone is sharing a time when the rain ruined their day. Some are funny, some are tragic, yours doesn’t quite connect.
It’s your turn to tell, but the anecdote that you’re thinking about doesn’t really fit the format of the other stories at all. The rain has never ruined your day. In truth, it’s embellished many of them; you love the smell that announces its arrival, you love the electricity that’s in the air, you love the way it feels on your skin and the way it makes the whole world stand still like Christmas lights strung around an intimate dark room.
But you can’t quite capture the words to describe all those feelings in that moment – you become discouraged halfway through as it becomes apparent that no one in the room is on the same wavelength as you.
“Yeah, I was walking through my grandpa’s yard when it started pouring, so I ran under the old magnolia tree that we used to climb when we were kids. It was such a cool feeling, like the safest I’ve ever felt, ya know? It was awesome.”
Swing and a miss. There’s a break of silence. Everybody is thinking you’re kinda weird now.
Dispute that.
You’re goddamn right it was awesome.
I want to tell you why that story doesn’t suck.
That story was a figurative manifestation of your identity, your fingerprint in a story. No other person has ever felt that way, and though there are people that may do a better job at explaining the swells and currents that occur in those minute moments of distinction, you told it the best because it was only yours to tell.
It was a you-had-to-be-there moment. And not just there physically because you still wouldn’t have felt it, either. You had to be there physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, struggling desperately on a feeling to be desperately in that moment with a medley of jubilation rebounding through your vibrating heartstrings. And you know, there was only one person that meets all that criteria for those few minutes of heartbeats quickening into infinity.
You. You know what you know.
You understand what happened from every angle that can be understood – and I understand what I feel in the times that mean much to me more than anyone who’s ever existed or ever will exist. There’s no bridge between two people that could ever hold the freight of these event’s significance because this is seed of the joy in life, deep beneath the surface where eyes can see, far too complex in design, meaning, and purpose to be explained by the blind, muffled voices far above.
So I apologize in advance if I seem kind of shallow when you ask me about my past year. From August 20, 2015 to June 15, 2016 was my moment for which you had to be there, and I would never risk spoiling a single second of it for the sake of being the cool partygoer with the cool stories, because frankly I care more about preserving the memory of those golden days in the East African Savannah, under the Indian stars, cruising through the Vietnamese jungle, much more than I care about impressing any person on earth.
I suppose that I’ve found a virtue in selfishness that way.
I know for a fact that I was the happiest man alive this past year, and attempting to prove that fact to somebody seems to be the most direct route to tarnishing my pure regard for pure days past. There’s great merit in being content with your own story without having to pass it around, adding a bit here and a bit there to make it more appealing to the ears of your listeners while cheapening the experience in the eyes of your heart. Suddenly you forget how the Tanzanian sunset light poured out of the sky like honey, how the chance encounters with hearts and minds very similar to your own made a certain day explode with spectrums of ideas and laughter.
When you reach the end of your days you will stumble upon a bookshelf, and on that bookshelf there will be but a single storybook. This book will contain the absolute truth as you know it. The most truthful book ever written. More truthful even than the history books, National Geographic magazines, and the religious texts altogether because this one was written in summer sweat, blood from a scraped knee, saliva from the mouth of a lover, tears wiped away on an old sweater sleeve: the ink of living. It was written by the reader.
You’ve got nothing else to do on your deathbed, so you’ll heft it from the shelf, blow off the collected dust of the decades, open the cover and begin on page one.
As you read the story of your life, the secret story that can’t be shared, will your eyes sparkle over the words with admiration like insurgent diamonds cut from the young cosmic novas? Will your hands reach with blistering anticipation to the next page like a young boy’s to the next branch of the backyard magnolia tree?
Or will you cringe with regret at all the missed opportunities, at the person you could’ve been?
It depends… Is it a good story? How was the character development? Was the protagonist likeable? Was the antagonist injustice?
Did you work to change your setting for the better? Did you work to make the other character’s stories better?
Was the plot exciting?
Most importantly – was the theme love or fear?
I’m working on the greatest story ever written; I hope you’d pick up your pen and join me. This is the story that I will die in peace with, it’s the book I’ll cling to as I rage, rage against the dying of the light. Your heaven’s acclaim will reckon on the light you shared throughout the pages of days.
Life is a secret giggled a little too loudly into the ear of a loved one, a best friend, the one person that could possibly get it. Maybe it wouldn’t do well as a story, but I’d say to whomever wanted to know that it’s not worth telling anyway – you had to be there.