It's All in the Story

I could tell you the story I have of myself but that might just be a distraction from what I’d like to say in this essay. Instead, let me just start with the premise that everyone has a story of themselves. The story probably consists of a mixture of family, surrounding culture and personal circumstances – especially one’s experiences as a child. It’s taken me a long time to come to the place where I feel I have to forgive myself for my own story. This is not to say that I’m especially good or bad – just that, like everyone else – it’s really difficult to step out of our stories once they’re established. And also, forgiveness is not a one-off event – in my view. Whether you’re a religious person who believes in a God of forgiveness or you’re an atheist, I think it’s helpful to think of forgiveness as a process. And now, well, I’m turning towards at least being able to think about forgiving other people their stories. Again, this is not about whether other people are good or bad – rather it’s about the difficulties we face in trying to understand each other. Because we all live in stories. So, let me explain what I mean by this. Science aims to discover ‘objective’ truth – truth that stands outside any personal opinion of what the world might be like. Perhaps I have some personal opinion of what the world might be like. Perhaps some personal opinion about gravity or the electro-magnetic spectrum, but clearly, that’s not science. It’s not about opinion, it’s about facts – and if my opinion doesn’t fit the facts then it’s me that has to change! But nonetheless, a bit of subjectivity still slips into science – this seems unavoidable. It can never be completely objective. So perhaps the best way to describe it is a kind of shared common ground on what constitutes truth. There’s a real world out there, but we can never know it directly. The shared common ground of knowledge is as close as we can get. I’m not sure – dear reader – if you find these ideas problematic. For myself, I’d say, they are abstract concerns rather than personal concerns. There’s no emotional baggage attached. When, however we come to our relationships with other people – well, that’s where things might get more tricky. Let’s start with a simple disagreement. We are disagreeing about facts perhaps and so the matter is probably easily resolved. We seek more information. One person is correct, the other is wrong. It’s straight-forward. But when we start to see the impact of stories is exactly here. There’s a tendency to treat all disagreements as if they are disagreements about facts – as if they are simple matters of who is right and who is wrong. One feature of a conflict resolution method known as Non-Violent Communication is to try to find the emotion behind another person’s statement of ‘the facts’. So, we might ask ourselves why does this person feel this way? What’s their inner emotional state that’s causing them to behave the way they’re behaving? This is certainly a step in the right direction. But my feeling is that it doesn’t go far enough. The process still suggests that there’s a correct way of seeing the world and that sometimes our emotions get in the way of this. They obscure ‘the truth’. So – it might be contended – if we could only process the emotions – or understand another’s emotions – then we’d be able to see the truth more clearly. I think the idea of us all living in our own stories takes us beyond this. Let me give a simple example. Say there’s a big tree at the end of my street. To me, well, I just love the tree. I go past it every day and I’m always glad to see it. To another person, the tree blocks the view of traffic when they’re trying to turn out of our street onto the main road. To anther the tree puts their garden into shade and they’d prefer to have more light. To another, they carved their initials onto the tree as a teenager – so the tree reminds them of their youth and of a first love. To an elderly neighbour, they sit beneath the tree to read on summer days – it is a place of rest. So, we all have our different stories of the same objective tee. And it’s the same for thousands of other things in our lives. Now say that the council is going to fell the tree. For some people they don’t even register this information – it plays no part in their story. And when I say this I mean that – not only do they ignore the information about the council – for them the ‘information’ does not even exist. But, of course, for others the news about the felling is taken in as good or bad news – depending on our stories. Now multiply that a thousand times and you start to get the picture of how stories affect our relationships. There’s a whole lot of information that DOES NOT EVEN EXIST for some people – which is AS PLAIN AS DAY for others! Take that thing that’s mentioned sometimes as an aspect of coercive control – it’s called ‘gas-lighting’. There’s usually a power-dynamic going on here. The arrogant boss might deny his workers their rights because he simply thinks their complaints are fantasies. Or the abusive husband thinks that his wife’s worries are delusional nonsense. Again – at face value – this might be viewed as just another instance of what are lies and what are the facts – the workers have legitimate complaints; the wife’s emotions are reality and the husband’s abuse is genuine violence. But then – bringing in the stories of these protagonists – it’s not just that the boss and the husband are factually wrong and fail to consider the emotions of others – it’s that the abusers DON’T EVEN SEE THE HARM THEY DO! And so, forgive the stories of others. It’s not that there’s nothing that can be done. All our stories can be changed through all sorts of means. It’s just that it’s a difficult task – a very difficult task sometimes – to even make other people AWARE of the things that don’t form part of their stories. Usually – I think – don’t try to do anything directly. The trick is – get other people to tell their stories – and listen very closely! Ask sensible questions – show resect – allow others their dignity. The reason for doing this is partly that the way other people see the world is endlessly fascinating! It may change our own story – and I think it’s best always to be open to that. And the other reason is that – in telling their stories – maybe never having been asked to explain themselves this way before – the truth or otherwise of how another person sees themselves will be more apparent. Passing strangers in the street, I think about each person living their story. You see it in people’s faces – the little moments of pleasure, surprise, fear, contempt, joy, confusion and humour. And there’s something very beautiful about the human condition. Each stranger encountered is a shared moment and one that might form a little part of my story and their story. There’s often a lot of humour involved in this – and if each moment is a potential moment of shared humour then I think that’s a good way of being in the world.