Finding Your Story

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. —Franz Kafka 

The storyteller Michael Meade says that we live two adventures in each life. The first involves securing our basic needs and making a place for ourselves in the world. The second is learning, deeply and continuously, who we are and what we stand for. This is a class for the second adventure.  

Life challenges us to become aware of the stories that shape us—family stories, cultural mythologies, even popular movies, television shows, and songs—and then create and live our own story. We face this challenge throughout our lives but perhaps most acutely as we move into adulthood; this is the period when we most need to become conscious of stories and their power and to gather wisdom, practices, and resources for finding our own story. This class, designed with seniors in mind, will illuminate and explore these resources and give you the opportunity to reflect deeply, in discussion and writing, on what truly calls to you in this life. It will also give you resources and practices to help you follow that calling.  

We will engage with some of the world’s great stories—myths, parables, modern fiction, teaching tales, and even aphorisms or koans. In them we can find elements that resonate with our own story and also provocations that help us unearth and cultivate our native gifts—the genius in each of us. We will look at these masterworks, from Tolstoy to Wolff, as voices in the largest conversation we have as humans, the one that asks: who am I? why am I here? what truly matters? how can I be happy? Together we will investigate how these stories, and stories like them, can be used to help us find our own story. 

Instructors: Jonah Willihnganz, Fred Luskin. Fulfills WAYS-CE.