Why Your Story Matters

I’ve been thinking about stories. Not the kind in books but the ones we tell ourselves. I’ve been thinking about the stories we tell ourselves to explain the social world in which we move. Each of us has her own stories that give meaning to the behavior of others, or that explain our reactions to that behavior. Mostly, we don’t think of them as, or call them, stories. For us, they are simply the truth, a set of facts that we accept without question. “She is so controlling.” “He’s a momma’s boy.” “She acts like everything is about her.” “I had to suck it up and be the bigger person.” “He’s a drama queen.” “She ruined my life.”

I know it can be difficult—truly challenging, even—to accept that our interpretations of experience are not objective fact. It can be hard to let go of them, as our capital-R Reality. But they are, actually, little, local realities, unique to each of us. Perhaps this idea is new for you, but I assure you there is nothing new about understanding reality as individual, as unique, rather than shared. Many psychologists and spiritual leaders, alike, both historical and modern, write and speak about how we each interpret the activity around us through our individual filters. Law enforcement professionals cope with the reality that every eye witness to a crime has an individual and unique description of events. There is even a prominent child development and education model, known as Constructivism, founded on the premise that each child constructs a large proportion of his knowledge, particularly his social knowledge.