LETTERS, syllables and characters are all ingredients of human language and are all useful in any piece of writing, in writing any which story, and in co-authoring one’s very own lifestory before facing the option of writing about it. But here I choose to single out a specific letter, a specific syllable, and a specific character.There is this “multi-layered” letter “i,” there is the relational Tagalog syllable “ka,” and there is that controversial Chinese character for circumstance.

Each one of these three can be discussed profoundly as it pertains to how you are actively participating shaping up your life story, your very own “novelife.” We do precisely that in succeeding items in this four-part series.
But wait! How can any of this be useful to us at all if we cannot even imagine ourselves to be co-authors of our lives, if we do not even become appreciative readers of our own lifestories? Indeed, in our own lives, many of us are mere…

The very first issue of Light-Share Digest (LD-1, Second Quarter, 2005) carries my piece on being “Happily Awake,” where I share this observation:

“Many people sleepwalk to the bathroom upon ‘waking up.’ Many others sleepwalk all over town – to work or school and back – the whole day everyday, all their lives! That is not being happily awake. That’s not even being really awake!”

And why do I say “all their lives” in that sentence? Because the storyline is pre-dictated by society’s blueprint of expectations. Much pressure is exerted by parents and peers for everyone to just obey that sort of script, and not assert one’s own ardent personal preferences. Only a minority would pay heed to clarifications that self-determination – whether individual or collective – is an inviolable divine gift implanted in the essence of free will. The rest would benefit much from a reminder from Associate Editor Joydee Elizondo (nee Robledo) in “No Need to Rush to the Wedding Altar” (LD-3, Fourth Quarter, 2005):

“Living by the dictates of society has both its good and bad sides. It is really now up to the person how to make all these unsolicited pieces of advice from all directions work for one’s best interests.”

Many people still, by default, blindly choose to join society’s slow-motion stampede along the predetermined paths as herded by society’s rules.
Many among us have allowed themselves to be trapped in dust-in-the-wind existence.

These people have grown so accustomed to the veritable “railroad tracks of life,” the society-dictated strictly-linear road map of conformism and passivity, obediently obeying what are widely perceived as unalterable ways of proper experience for everyone.

A number of people, overlapping well with the sleepwalkers, are the spectators of their own lives, the avid readers of their own life stories, each a faithful chronicler or documentor of one’s own novel-life. These people do not make any long-term road maps on their journeys, but at least they know how to enjoy the trip!

I have written a novel, a number of novelettes and a whole bunch of short stories, where fictional character confronts fictional circumstance in each scene. I have tried to make each confrontation exciting for readers, with a number of various plausible outcomes of triumph or defeat on the part of the character, holding the readers in excited suspense as to which scenario would play out further on in the story. With this background of mine that allows for fully appreciating exciting scenes in stories that I read and stories that I write, I have grown to appreciate exciting confrontation scenes in my own life.

In My NoveLife (1996), I share some thoughts along these lines: We are really characters in novels that are our own lives. Appreciating the series of scenes that have made up my own life as an unfinished novel, I have come to believe that there is a powerful Author who created me as a character, an artistic work-in-progress, and has been setting me up against all sorts of configurations of circumstances for character-development and character-manifestation purposes.

This Great Author has not only been very creative but also skillful and at times even playful, in stringing up suspenseful episodes for characters like me, and has even been doing it all simultaneously, orchestrating how we, as we live our own respective novel-lives, walk in and out of one another’s lives as strong supporting cast or at least in important cameo roles!

Yes, what we often dismiss as plain luck, accidental coincidences and chance encounters are cosmically-scripted “Celestine Coincidences.” The more precise term is serendipity.

Deep consciousness of this raises us clearly from the level of long-term sleepwalkers “blowin’ in the wind” to the level of appreciative and, therefore, happy spectators.

Having been created as characters with the power of choice and the guaranteed freedom to exercise such power of choice, we human beings actually participate in shaping up the novel.

Any spectator following the unfolding of a 'teleplay,' a radio drama, a novel or a short story, would somehow form his/her own emotional preference or wish as to how the story would eventually run in succeeding scenes or pages.

The main character developed by a skillful writer would win a strong sympathy or a strong antagonism, and the readers or audience would be moved to celebrate or grieve, as the case may be, this character’s triumph or destruction.

But these readers or audiences would be conscious that the entire stage play has been completely scripted and that members of the cast have memorized that completed script.

There is only room left for wishing the characters well or ill and for anxious curiosity as to how the author had chosen long before how the story is to unfold and end.

But there is one very important story production where the main character and spectator has a real say in the plot outcome and succeeding scenes and chapters.
This is the still-unfinished scripting of the story of your own life. Not only have you been given, right from the start, the opportunity to participate in designing the exciting circumstances you as character would be made to confront, you as a long-designated co-author have been given the chance to participate in designing yourself as the main character in the story of your life.

As a spectator in the story of your own life, you form your wishes as to how the story would unfold in future scenes and chapters, wishing for the main character that is yourself the best of fortunes in the series of circumstances to be confronted. But in contrast to readers and audiences of pre-completed scripts or manuscripts, such wishes carry much weight in forming the story itself – creating desired scenes, pre-altering undesirable ones, making changes in the main characteristics of the main character which have been, up to this point, plainly unexpectable.

As co-author you can transform your own lifestory from one full of torment and suffering to one rich in fun, pleasure and, most important of all, deep and sustainable happiness!

Our status as Co-Authors of our own respective lives has been conferred by the Main Author when we were created as beings with free will. Although we were not told in plain words about that gift of free will, we have gradually discerned this from experience, especially of causality.

The principle of causality has been learned by all humans who have awakened to some substantial degree of wisdom. From a full understanding of causality emerge the profound concepts of responsibility and the proactive mindset. The Great Author sets you up against all sorts of circumstances, and you as co-author choose how you as main character would respond to all these circumstances, in such manner determining the nature or elements of future circumstances, and at the same time determining how you as main character would respond to similar circumstances in the future. We do our co-authoring by the choices we make. We decide what to do, and then we decide whether or not to stand by the first decision, and we decide how to respond to the consequences of all our decisions.

Yes, indeed, I believe we are all co-authors from the very start. In the philosophical novel Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield says each one of us as eternal spirit chooses the physical body to use as vehicle for earth life (by choosing which pair of parents that physical body would emerge from), and chooses one’s response to all external influences felt in the course of that earth life. But we have our own different levels of awareness about this. And the aware have had different responses to such consciousness.

Strong human synergy can only be attained by enough individuals deciding to be proactive and deciding to develop themselves well as humans, and deciding firmly to band together in close teamwork and harmony. As much as each of us is co-authoring one’s own personal lifestory, we are also collective co-authors of our collective lives, our community histories, simultaneously living as individuals and as communities.

Judging by your own personal behavior, are you a sleepwalker, a spectator or a co-author of your own life?

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