Ask 10 people about New York. You’re likely to get ten different answers. One person might describe Brooklyn. Another Manhattan. Another: the museums and tourist attractions. Another: the beautiful people and diversity. One person might go on about how dirty, crowded, loud, crime-ridden, expensive and appalling the city is. Another might describe how cosmopolitan, rich, luxurious, beautiful, modern, exciting and fun it is.
All these descriptions are accurate. Are there ten different New Yorks? The answer is: it depends. What does it depend on? Which story you want to believe. All these descriptions are accurate…for the person describing the city. All the descriptions have more to do with the person’s intent in experiencing the city, or living there, or working there. In other words, we experience New York through our stories, our intents, our purposes.
So it goes with our intents, our stories our purposes for relationship. What is your intent, your purpose for telling a story that “all men who are interested in transwomen are scumbags, users or objectifiers”? How about “there are no good men who are interested in me”? What is the purpose in telling the story “I can’t authentically act on my desire for a transwoman because I’ll lose my friends, my job or my current life”?
How you experience your life is totally up to you. You can change the stories you tell about your life. In doing so, you will change your life.
If you’re wanting to document the what is of your life, keep telling disempowering stories. The only cost is, you’re doomed to repeating disempowering experiences. If you want to create the “what is” of your life, deliberately, so that your life reflects what you want, instead of what you don’t want. You may want to look at your stories and why you keep telling them to yourself and to anyone else who will listen.
