More on Stories

Based on my interaction with my Evolver friend Meg about my last blog post ("How I Achieved Financial Freedom"), maybe I understated my case. I did because to fully state my case would require for me to fully tell that old story, and I don't like to tell it, because telling it goes back to it, and going back to it runs the risk of falling back into those vibrations and patterns of thought. I need a crafty way to clarify that has an energetic shield around it. I hope this way is crafty and shieldy enough, and lets me tell the story in a way that gets us past it.

So, this is a tale of pure fiction. It's a *compelling* fiction, so compelling I actually once fully believed it was true. But it's still just a fictional story.
_____________________________________________________

Here's the story. "I," an insecure, smart (whatever that means), and tormented kid from the very conservative working-class suburbs east of New Orleans, go to college at a moderately-priced Mormon school with a full-ride Air Force scholarship just to get away from home. But while the semester is already underway and I'm spending 15+ hours a week in ROTC activities in addition to my heavy schedule, the government pulls the scholarship from under me for medical concerns. So then, I do what I'm advised to do by the financial aid counselors in order to stay in school. I'm fed certain lines that are very compelling, and left to believe this is what I need to do if I want a future--not a "the world is my apple" feeling, but more like being cattle shuffled through a stockade.

Then I leave the Mormon church, after I spend two hard years proselyting for it, because I don't believe it anymore, but this makes me ineligible to go to the school. So I apply to Tulane University, near my hometown, because they once aggressively tried to recruit me with scholarships, and I'm again offered those impressive scholarships that make the university seem very affordable. What an honor! How lucky for me that I can go to this prestigious university and not rack up huge debt. Because I *am* very concerned about debt, and uncomfortable even about the modest debt I'm already in from the other school. It's even to the point where I've started wondering if it's worth it to keep on living when my efforts to make payments on my debt and also support myself--and I'm not accomplishing either--by working at Target and then Home Depot have made me believe all I can look forward to is a bleak grey future of poverty. So then, of course, when I'm offered these great scholarships to this university, I think, okay, great, now I'll get back into school and do things I'm actually good at--and I can actually eventually make any money from--and actually put off and lessen my debt by doing it.

But a similar thing happens as before--the cost of attendance winds up being way more than they told me it was, and even that is with me scrounging and skipping meals and eating from dumpsters and not getting all my books. I later find out from some others, teachers and students alike, that that's what the university routinely does--underestimate and consistently raise costs while offering seemingly--but only seemingly--comprehensive scholarships in order to attract as many students as possible, because the university is a *friggin' corporation*. And they don't give much of that money to the people who actually wear themselves out teaching to worn-out students; it all disappears into the nebulous "endowment", the only conspicuous spending of which is on non-educational bells and whistles to make the school even more of an admissions "powerhouse." I leave because it's a miserable experience and I can't support myself through it at all, getting into tension with housemates about rent.

And the loan corporations are a similar thing. In this story it isn't I who set out to pull the wool over their eyes. In this story the loan corporations have millions of students entering a higher education system every year that they can't afford, entering it because they believe they can't afford not to. Sure as clockwork, it's a cashflow that lasts as long as the economy does--just as for their siblings the mortgage companies. Their money grows and grows and grows as the graduates and non-graduates pay back with interest, and they hound those who don't and treat them like pariahs while easily swallowing what they can't get from them. And in the end, it turns out that the whole thing was a kind of Ponzi scheme, because the students are like investors who were being sold a future that didn't exist because the endless sucking couldn't be supported anymore. But still they hound those who are starting to realize that and trying to create a different way, for the nickels and dimes they can get out of them, because that's the only thing they know how to do and they're still running on vapors.
_____________________________________________________

But that's an old story I used to tell myself. It's full of drama; it really draws you in. But it's not the kind of story I want to tell or listen to anymore. In fact, I'm starting to actually believe that stories of thriving and abundance actually make *better* stories, way more compelling, and that maybe, compared to them, like Rob Brezsny likes to say, those old stories of greed and struggle and privation are incredibly dull and boring and formulaic! So why tell those old stories any longer? Why accept the terms forced on you by those old stories, if they take away your power? You're an incredibly ancient, divine, wondrous Being. Everything you can imaginably want or need is yours in inspired creation. Life is magical, the universe is wonderful, and we're all sexy Gods and Goddesses. It's like Alan Watts said of the guru speaking to the student who's actually ready to hear it--"What are you doing, playing at that game? You're Shiva! Come out from there!" We have better stories to tell, and surely we have better games to play! And fun to have! And awe-struck wonder and gratitude at ourselves and everything!

So when the debt collectors call me with their threats, how should I regard them?

Only as players in a game that I found not fun, that I don't feel like playing anymore.