Narratives

We all have them.

In a constant stream, we feed the raw circumstances of our lives into the machinery of our unconscious minds where they're woven into stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what the world's like.

Consider the weekend...

There might be cooking, cleaning, shopping, sports, hobbies, visits, or just rest. Running through it all is a story, often about how there isn't enough time in life to get everything done and the looming unpleasantness of work.

But it could just as easily be about how work is a pleasure, and it's also a pleasure to change perspective and routine for two days out of every seven.

In less developed places, a weekend might seem strange - like something people do once they lose agency.

Consider health...

It can be a thriller or a feel-good drama, loosely based on real events.

Consider disease...

It can be a story about failure, punishment, misfortune, victimhood, growth, or battle scars.

Parents who have a child born with a health condition can tell themselves a story about how that child isn't perfect.

Or they can tell a story about how "perfect" means a whole mess of different things in this wide world and, really, "perfect" is just you, child, here in our capable arms.

Narratives are learned. It's a useful feature that puts members of a tribe on the same page.

They can be unlearned and replaced. Let's not kid ourselves, though, sometimes that takes a great deal of work.

The place to start is to see them.

From there, I would think the goal should be to make them as fact based and useful as possible.