What would your life look like as a comic book? Oops, sorry, I mean graphic novel. How would the first page unfold?
Would you start at birth, showing your humble upbringing as you learned about your secret past?
Or perhaps you’d start the story in high school getting picked on by the bullies. Then one day you ate a genetically modified ear of corn and developed your super powers. Now you spend your evenings fighting crime as Maize Man (Or Maize Girl)…
Would the comic book be boring? Or exciting? Would your book become a collectors edition? Or pass out of print and into obscurity?
It might interest you to know, that nobody else has lived your life, and nobody ever will.
You are unique and you aught to be in comics. No one else can tell your story.
It’s possible that you’ve never been addicted to crack cocaine and overcome it.
You may never have been kidnapped by the mafia and lived to tell the tale.
It’s possible that you haven’t battled for your life surrounded by enemy soldiers and overcome the odds.
But maybe you have.
Or maybe your story is more important.
Maybe your story is the one that will inspire a single individual to look at the world a different way and realize they have value. Maybe in telling your story you can change the world for just a single individual. And for that dramatic change isn’t it worth putting yourself out there?
The neat thing is that it’s really not your responsibility to judge what your story can do, it’s your job to tell it. Because nobody else can.
And it is also possible that your story, in the telling, will change you.
One thing that I’ve always been amazed by is the impact of pain and guilt on the human mind. It is segregating and isolating and makes us feel alone. We lead ourselves to the assumption that we are alone. That nobody else would ever make the same mistakes that we have, or be flawed enough to fall into the same pits that we have.
Telling your story can open the world up. Because you will find out that you are not alone. And the people that hear your story will also learn that they are not alone.
Just look around at the world and you will find groups of people bound together over the most obscure things you can imagine. And the common thread that brought them together, is that somebody talked. Somebody was bold enough to step out and say “I do this, and enjoy it”, or in some cases “I am this way, and would like help”.
So a challenge for you, or perhaps you can look at it as an opportunity, is to find your medium. Where should your story be told? Do you want to talk to one individual at a time? Or perhaps a graphic novel is in your future. Maybe you should tell your life through interpretive dance? Don’t be limited by the medium, find a format that allows you to reach out and make the effort to connect. It’s your story, tell it.
So when you feel alone and isolated and not sure who would understand, remember that there are millions out there feeling the same way and it’s all part of the process.
Now if I could just figure out how to activate my superpowers. (Maybe some more GMO tofu?)
Namaste,
Kevin
