Do you know the halfway point of a story? Can you feel it?
I think we're innately wired for story, not just from the research I've read by Brene Brown or Joseph Campbell's books and essays. There's an intrinsic level of our mind which reads something and forms stories, or describes an event and puts it in a story. We are able to break it down if asked and if we give ourselves time to think about the parts, such as beginning, middle and end.
So, can you say you are able to identify that midway point? I think the answer should be yes and often times we are able to feel it. There's a sense of something turning because that middle place is where change happens, where the shift begins. Sometimes it's obvious, it's where a big event which changes the state of the characters or the course of our lives, and sometimes it's the curtain closing before heralding us to the next act.
At this time, I'm in a few middle points in life and in writing. The change has begun to take hold and I can feel myself swept up in that feeling of something coming. It's both scary and thrilling. I think we often find ourselves in quandaries of emotions when we're vacillating between staying and going, ending and beginning. There's uncertainty and I think that's why we know it's a midpoint too. There are still questions to be answered things are changing for us to find the answers, but we are not there yet.
In writing, it feels like an, "Ah, so now it starts." Not only is the midpoint of my story the pause before the change where it is a turning point in the story - it's a turning point in the narrative as a whole. It's that moment in a hero's arc where they realize there's no going back. If they keep going forward, then the tangled web of their lives will continue reaching outward and become even messier.
Scary and thrilling.
It can feel intimidating and as many of us can probably attest, we can be the obstacle to our own moving forward. Fear worms a hole into the dreams and the more we think of what could be - we think of where it could all go wrong. This is where comfort gets us and the point about a middle is the moving past comfort. Comfort is where we began and now it is time to shift, to move ourselves forward and know that it will change us.
I drag my heels. Sometimes I firmly plant them and refuse to continue onward. That is when I really need to take a hard look at what I want, why I'm doing this and what I'm so afraid of.
I'm a sprinter when it comes to change, but only when I am certain in what I'm running toward. If I can't overcome the doubt then I won't even toe the line, but if for one moment I'm able to muster courage then I will start to run - and I won't stop for anything. There is a problem with barreling into a change, but I won't get to that in this post.
Instead, let's focus on that moment of indecision and when you start to run. There's the middle again. We've had it with our doubts and made-up our mind. Commence the sequence of changes. In life this could be a change in job, a change in relationships, a change in place, a change in mindset or so much more. We've reached our turning point and I suppose now we can answer ourselves the question of who rings the changes: we do. Every moment of our lives there is movement going on in the world and we are ringing the changes.
We can feel the shift as it happens. We know when something clicks. It's not a knowing of good or bad just a knowing of what is and could be. So the midpoint of a story is an important thing. Pay attention. It's where it all begins.
