I feel like I've been through a lot of traumatic shit recently. It's unimportant what the specifics are, but rather, I'm going to talk about the big picture that emerged for me.

You know what they said about Shakespeare, perhaps the most prolific writer of any generation? They said he wrote absolutely no original plots. How is it then that we hold the plays that he wrote to such high esteem? It's all about how he told it. And in life, its very similar I think.

There are 6 billion people living on the planet today. At every moment that means that there are 6 billion things being done, felt, experienced. Perhaps I was naive, but I thought that these traumatic things happening to me were original, pure, and I was the first one to deal with them. I learned this stuff in psychology that teenagers have this idea that the world revolves around them and that things are unique to their experience. I am clearly a member of the human experience because I felt this too, but after calming down and realizing my situation I see that I am living no original plot.

I think about the friends that I have surrounded myself with. They have been through similar things. I attend the University of Michigan, hundreds of thousands of people have done the same. The emotions I am feeling are not the original of their species.

However, similar to Shakespeare it is important to tell the story as best one can. I may not be experiencing "original" things (sure they feel new to me), but it is imperative that I tell my own story as best I can. Where I go from here is what I make of it. I can put together a masterpiece, tell a story that I will be proud of, or I can let my situation get to me and falter as a result.

I think I'm more in the mood to write that masterpiece, design a symphony, and tell this story as best I can. The plot may not be original, but its all how you tell it!

This post was originally written by Tyrone Schiff
University of Michigan · Organizational Studies · 04 Jan 2007