August 7, 2026

Letters to the Editor

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Reader: Leading a contemplative life can help us live more intentionally

Do we all live in a story? If we do, is this “story” something we can step outside of to edit at will—casting ourselves as author rather than character?

I think we do live in stories—but not in the sense that life is fictional. Rather, human beings make sense of their lives through narrative. We remember the past as a story, anticipate the future as a story and interpret the present through the story we believe we are living.

I don’t believe we can ever become completely external to ourselves. Every attempt to “edit” our lives is itself another chapter in the story. There is no God’s-eye view from which we rewrite our existence as if we were outside time.

However, human beings possess a remarkable capacity for self-reflection. We can become aware of the narrative that has shaped us—our wounds, ambitions, loyalties, fears and inherited assumptions. Once we become conscious of them, we are no longer merely characters being carried along by the plot. We become participants in its direction.

We are never the absolute author of our lives, but we are more than passive characters. We are co-author.

Self-awareness alters the plot. Reflection creates freedom. Contemplation widens the distance between impulse and action, allowing us to respond rather than merely react.

A rushed life leaves little room to examine the story we are living. A contemplative life, by contrast, creates enough interior silence to ask, “Is this truly the story I want to inhabit?” It is in that silence that a person begins not to escape the story, but to live it more intentionally.

- Kirth N. Roach | Order of Carmelite Discalced Secular Indianapolis

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