I am currently working on a manual to share the storywise practice of narrative mapping. It’s working title is “Mapping a more Memorable Life.”  Here is the opening.

PREFACE

Lost? Stuck? Tired? Looking for a new life? Want to get rich? OK, but isn’t that how most self-help books begin? This manual is different. I don’t want to help you. In fact, I hope to show you that  mostly you don’t need it. You don’t need to get a life. You need to get a map.

First, we’ve got to get rid of some obstacles, to make a space for change to happen. The discourse of change and transformation are a little crowded right now by four ideas.  We have to get rid of four tired out clichés that sound as if they have the secret but are ultimately hollow. They no longer pay for our attention.

What words?

Words and ideas such as “the meaning of life” and “finding purpose” and “discover your vision” and “follow your passion.” They are the four horsemen of this apocalypse of irrelevance that have besieged the progressive mind, and contributed to that pervasive feeling that we are lost, stuck, tired, or that the world is no longer working for us.

 We are lost- not because we have lost our way, but because we have lost our language, a moving language. Our words have betrayed us into searching for zombies and phantoms, for what is not there. 

These seductive territories of passion, meaning, vision and purpose are ultimately mirages, sold to us by the consultancy machines of modern leadership training. They never work but we keep trying anyway. “It must be us- it can’t be the ideas,” we say. But the game is up.

Wittgenstein said that the job of philosophy was to undo language’s bewitchment of the mind. Ludwig W had the idea. So lets get to it.

CHAPTER ONE- WHAT IF THE MEANING OF LIFE WAS MEANINGLESS?