By nature, humans are storytellers. By knowing this, we would think we know that the stories we tell ourselves tend to be fiction. Yet the literary functions we use to create Harry Potter are the same motifs that allow us to share our history. Our pasts become plotlines, and the future is a story arc. We tend to have this main character energy as our identities encompass our experiences. The events in which we’ve overcome, failed, or achieved make us who we are. Again, this is a false illusion, as telling our stories in linear succession makes us believe that there is a pattern to chaos. The narrative provides us with comfort because it enables us to make sense of things that don’t seem to have a clear explanation.

Do We Control Our Narrative?

When we narrate our lives, we are given a false sense of control. We are the authors of our lives because, at every moment, our thoughts provide commentary. As the narrator, we assign ourselves the power to assign meaning, justify suffering, and predict outcomes. We are returning to the Newtonian idea that life is a mechanism, and through our thoughts, we can “manifest” the life we want. This belief in manifesting is still a refusal to let things be as they are.

It’s easy to conclude that this narration of our story is merely another form of resistance. In our attempts to organize the past into something neat and understandable, we resist the present moment. Because we try to understand the breakup last night, we resist the sad emotions that exist right now. Trying to make sense of things distances us from the raw emotions of today. It also allows us to rewrite pain into something noble, which dismisses the pain altogether. Instead of feeling and dealing with the rejection, we say it’s redirection. Instead of being confused, we’d rather be certain about something else unrelated. While suffering, these beliefs do offer comfort, but this comfort comes at a cost. This narration only offers a life of concepts rather than an actual life. It’s a fairy tale of our creation.

The Cost of the Stories We Tell

The next step is to identify the costs because we tend to care only about comfort as a benefit. Our addiction to narrative comes at the cost of a flattened experience. Instead of enjoying the mystery of life, we attribute our experiences to cause and effect. This is a very scientific yet one-dimensional way of looking at life. Instead of letting life flow, we force it into coherence. We cannot live a life that we don’t comprehend, and so we limit life to a box of our understanding.

Our false narratives not only affect us, but they also affect the people and situations around us. As a result of our limited perspective, we tend to judge people based on the role they play in our story, often disregarding their perspective. We also compare our stories to those of others, often only imagining their stories because we have no insight into their lives. We compare our imagined stories to the imagined stories of others, yet we think this is perfectly normal. When we think we know ourselves and we think we know others, we stop being curious. Life only becomes a limiting script that no person can transcend.

When It All Falls Apart

What happens when the story falls apart? There will come a time when the story begins to lose its sense of direction. The truth will contradict our beliefs. The person we thought we’d be married to forever wants a divorce, we get laid off from the dream job, or the identity of being a wealthy person collapses because our best-performing stock tanks. When reality doesn’t match the stories we tell, we begin to feel lost. At this moment, we tend to blame outside forces that didn’t make the story true, rather than realizing the story was never true to begin with. This moment is where we break down. This moment is our existential crisis. However, if we trust life as it is, a story that no longer makes sense becomes an opportunity to see the little glimmer of truth through the illusion that we created.

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