Each
political season, there is a lot of discussion about which campaign is
controlling the narrative. The
campaign that controls the narrative controls how others perceive the two
candidates, for good and for bad.
Candidates can be painted as out-of-touch with middle America or
empathetic to the plight of blue-collar workers. Once the narrative has been set, news stories are tailored
to fit into that prescribed narrative.
But narratives are often, perhaps usually, false.
Narratives
occur in our personal lives as well.
We create narratives about what people are like or how events transpired
and then interpret the events in our lives in a way that supports those
narratives. Anything that fails to
support those narratives is discarded, either consciously or unconsciously, as
clearly not being correct. Everything
we can use to support a narrative, however tenuous, is kept and used to build
on the often-false support that preceded it.
At
some point, the narrative, now riddled with exaggerations or falsehoods,
becomes our truth, and confronting that truth may seem too difficult a task or emotionally
dangerous. We need to stop and ask
ourselves, “What if I am wrong?” A
risk, of course, is finding out that you are, in fact, not wrong; that all the
bad things you have imagined are correct.
To be sure, knowing the truth stings more that just thinking
you know the truth. At least
knowing the truth allows you to move forward without lingering questions or
imaginings.
But
if you are wrong, and your narrative is largely just a product of your
imagination, how much pain and anxiety can be avoided? You will have freed yourself to move
forward without the burdens that go along with false narratives and let
yourself see people for who they are, not who you imagine them to be. As difficult as it is, I think it is worth confronting the fear and
risks. The payoff in the long-run
is too valuable.
