Once Upon A Time
Everybody loves a narrative. We talk in terms of our life stories. Really, it’s a bunch of little stories all woven together. Some are long; they can span decades. Others last only moments. But every human interaction contains a narrative. It is what we seek and what mean when we say we’ve made a connection.
We are so attuned to narratives that we search for them everywhere–saying “that cloud looks like an old woman with an umbrella” or “when she talks to me like that, I feel like a little child.” Everything is relative to the stories we tell ourselves and others.
This picture we paint is also the basis of affinity groups. It is their common narrative that brings groups of people together.
Stories are powerful precisely because we see ourselves in them. We identify with the players. We cast ourselves in the lead. Then as the plots unfold, they evoke the same emotional response in us as in the characters we’re watching. We cry when something tragic happens in a book or on screen. We smile when love wins and cheer when a crisis is averted.
We are prone to mingle our storylines with theirs. Each authentic experience is intensified when it is enhanced with an external parallel narrative.
Another reason there is power in stories is because we have the ability to modify them. If you don’t like your situation, you can tell yourself a different accounting of events. You can change the ending by taking action to change the middle. This is where destiny and character diverge and converge. Believing that our past experience is the sole determinant in our future opportunity is a fallacy. Significantly more important than our past is the story we choose to tell ourselves about the future.
I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. –William Ernest Henley, Invictus
