The stories we tell ourselves and others are more than just a set of events related in an interesting or entertaining form. They’re the very mechanisms by which we organize the world in our minds.
Stories either alter or confirm how we think the world works. They suggest new, or reinforce existing, assumptions, beliefs, and social norms. And they do this most often in the background, without our realizing it.
Example: If I tell you I saw a bird today building nest, putting on the final touches, and I thought how interesting it was that the bird could gather little sticks in its mouth and manage to construct a home for itself and its soon to be eggs and babies, and wondered how long the whole process may have taken the bird, I’m relaying an experience. The bird, and possibly the nest, and possibly me, are characters in the story. The plot, such as it is, involves, a linear aspect – start to end – about how the bird was building its nest. But there’s also an empathic, inferential aspect where I personalize the experience (the bird is building a “home” and has “babies”). I’m also imposing the idea that “time” is a factor to be considered. Finally, I’m relaying that I had access to a place where a bird would build a nest and that I had the space in my day to notice and observe it.
This all may seem obvious and mundane. But that’s the point. It’s the obvious we most often overlook, or think is not really that important to think about. Yet it’s the obvious that reinforces how we see the world. Over and over again. Every day. Every minute, it builds and is cumulative. In the example I’ve just provided, the story reinforces that the behavior and intent of other species in nature align with a paradigm for home and family that guides my everyday life, and that buttresses my own belief in that paradigm.
The “mundane” in our lives equals the “deep seated” in our imagination. The mundane is the fiber that holds the world together in our minds.
This subtle, entrenched communication of assumptions, beliefs, and norms is what can both support community life and cement tribal thinking. In this way, everyday stories can engage us or shield us from understanding what others may be saying or feeling or may cause us to impose our own view of the world on others; we can only immediately grasp that which our minds have a reference for. We rely on this reference for the mental building blocks necessary to accurately reassemble in our imagination the concepts encoded in words or images as they pass from others to us.
Think about when we use the words “Democrat” or “Republican” in telling a story, we reinforce the norm of a binary political system where humanity in America can be boiled down to two distinct value systems. Or when we note a person’s race or religion in an everyday story not about race or religion, we reinforce the notion that the color of someone’s skin or faith is a factor in how to view the context of an event. Or when we tell stories of war and patriotism, we carve deeper grooves in our minds to normalize concepts like nations and political boundaries.
If indeed everyday stories reinforce, or possibly disrupt and reorganize, our view of the world, then it seems we should be very aware of, concerned with and focused on the stories we tell ourselves and others.
What stories do you tell yourself and others on a daily, or even hourly, basis? When you’re focused on the key characters or events in the story, what assumptions, beliefs, and norms are you reinforcing?
Imagine the assumptions and norms underlying your stories determine whether a child feels they “fit in.” Or imagine they determine whether a teen sees certain types of killing as heroic. Or imagine that others feed us stories to reinforce a worldview that girds their own power, but hurts the greater community. And because the stories are compelling, we retell them, like folklore, without examining the norms they are reinforcing precisely because the norms are mundane to us.
If we’re fully cognizant of the power of the mundane in the stories we tell, would we focus more on them?
Which stories will we tell going forward?
