Life Script contains instructions for life drama. The players in a life drama sound like actors or actresses. However, the players in the life drama are people. This is what makes the selection of a life script so important. The life script one selects dictates the reactions others have that reinforce the continuation of a life script until
a socially accepted exit point arrives or it reaches its conclusion. Social expectations and even laws can dictate the instructions in a life script.
What type of instructions does a life script include?
• What are acceptable careers for someone on a specific life script? Where will they work?
• Who are you expected to marry? When are you expected to marry?
• What are the acceptable ways out of a life script and into another one?
• What are the standard ways to change scripts? How can people shift from loser scripts to winner scripts?
Life scripts are in part based on the locations where someone lives. Location dictates the local ecosystem and thus the careers that are available. Someone raised in the desert will rarely learn a life script that leads to becoming a fisherman. Someone raised in a rural area typically has the option of fleeing to the city to seek work other than the hard labor jobs that dominate the resource-based economy. Those in urban areas may look to the suburbs but rarely choose the rural life unless introduced to the script through fiction or role models.
For example, Inuit Eskimo life scripts include hunters, wives of hunters, fishermen, tour-guides, leather workers, cannery workers, teachers, leadership within the group and perhaps some “small town” jobs. Their life scripts will include few expectations of college and working as an engineer unless someone introduces that idea to a young person.
Whether shaman or a western religion, spiritual adviser positions exist though they may be part time. There are accepted events that can shift someone from one life script to another. A religious ceremony may spark an interest or shift to the “spiritual” script. Performing well on a group hunt can shift someone from mere hunter to a leadership position. Eskimo life scripts generally won’t include cowboy or a research position in astrophysics.
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