The Stories We Carry With Us
Photo by vnwayne fan on Unsplash
If we look at who we are today, we’re really an amalgamation of the experiences we’ve gone through and the lessons we’ve taken from those experiences - lessons that have, over time, become ingrained in us.
I think of it a bit like a mental ‘patchwork quilt’ that’s been sown together over time. In some areas, the work is seamless and the colors and patterns flow naturally together. In others, though, depending on who’s done the stitching, it’s less elegant and the resulting work is jarring and ill-fitting.
This is normal. Our lives aren’t a super slick, tailored reality that has been carved in the image of perfection. Rather, we’re this complex patchwork of stories - they are what make us who we are. Some helped, some hurt. Some moved us forward, some held us back. All of them taught us something though, and those are the stories we carry with us as we observe, interpret and react to the world around us.
When we’re younger, this ‘processing’ of those stories is often automatic and many times happens by default, itself shaped by learned experiences around us i.e. we don’t consciously work through them in any structured, logical, rational way. Rather, we let ‘default’ mental processes prevail, not always to good effect.
Again, no surprise there. We were kids, we didn’t know anything else, and our own responses were shaped by those around us - friends, family, classmates, etc. Other people’s stories.
As we got older, though, we kept carrying those stories around, using them to interpret the world around us, often in ways that don’t help.
What did her rejection mean? Was it a statement on who I really am? Of what I deserve? Ot was it just not the right time?
When they said they weren’t going to take the deal on the table, was that an indictment of our entire capability? And our value and our viability? Or was it just the wrong fit?
Depending on the stories we’ve hardwired into our heads, we see these events as overarching verdicts or existential questions, situations that pose fundamental questions about who we are, our worth and our value.
When, perhaps, they’re just not. They’re simply situations that exist in and of themselves, with implications that start and end at their own situational borders. Nothing existential about them.
But the stories we’ve told ourselves? They’ve shaped our interpretations, given them a life of their own. Sometimes they help, but more often, they don’t.
The question to ask ourselves, then, is what are those stories and are they merited? If not, do we need to be rethinking them - do we need to be changing our stories?
See, the difference between us as adults versus us as kids, is that we don’t need to be governed by the default processes of our youth. Instead, we can take a step back and think, assess and act.
In other words, we can tell ourselves different stories.
