Everyday fiction: thoughts on the stories we tell ourselves
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
When it comes to telling others what happened, do you prefer dull truth or exciting fiction?
Do you like to hear other people’s views of what’s happening in the news — or would you prefer to find out for yourself? Do you want the ‘truth’; or do you want a good story? How much of what you hear do you like to embellish? Maybe you feel that a little extra pizazz will make people more inclined to listen to you. Whether this is something you are aware of (and how much it matters) depends on where you’re standing and who’s telling the story.
We’ve all heard news based on stories people tell to journalists. Most seem to have little or no evidence to back them up. They often have little or no resemblance to each other, even if they are about the same event. Sometimes it’s difficult to decide whether they ever really happened.
When I was last in our local Barnes & Noble bookstore, I picked up a book of Victorian photographs of Tombstone. (In this part of Arizona, Tombstone’s the nearest we have to Disneyland: They reenact “The Gunfight at the OK Corral” every day, sometimes more than once.) The book had contemporary photographs of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Both looked like local preachers or small-town bank managers. Neat suits, white shirts, carefully knotted ties. The Clanton gang they gunned down looked much the same. You could change the captions to read “Respectable Inhabitants of 1880s Tombstone.”
Maybe it���s no wonder we find stories more believable than the truth. We seem to have an inbuilt desire for something larger than life. Many of our firmest beliefs come from such tales. Reality is like our own lives — it’s so darned dull.
The fish was how big . . . ?
We all know about the guy who caught the big fish — which got bigger and bigger each time he retold the tale. If you’ve never does this, you’d be very unusual.
Good stories — the right words put together in the right way — have the power to inspire us, terrify us, or simply stick in our minds and become part of ourselves. If you enjoy a good story — and we all do, it’s very tempting to embellish the events to make it seem more entertaining and interesting than it really is.
Small children are often more reliable witnesses than adults. They tell what they see. Adults focus on what they think they ought to see, then make a story of it so that it becomes more vivid.
Everyday storytellers
People are telling one another stories all the time — at a restaurant, in the office, at home around the dining table. Marketers tell stories about products. Newscasters add human interest stories to enhance dull, factual news. Hollywood and television entertainment are nothing but stories. It���s how we humans interact with each other. We get embarrassed when we have nothing of particular interest to say; so rather than say nothing, we embroider a minor incident into something which sounds exciting — and makes us sound exciting too.
We tell ourselves stories all the time — about what things mean, what other people must be thinking, about why we did or said things that worked out or failed us. Memory is a library of stories we’ve told ourselves about the way life is and the part we play in it.
So what are they like, those stories we tell ourselves? Are they inspiring or depressing? Do they make us feel ready to create a better future, or ready to give up now?
We believe the stories we tell ourselves all too easily — maybe because we need them to bolster our confidence, to impress the boss, to keep in with a group of friends, to brighten dull lives, and make us feel important. Be careful with your stories — if you tell them to yourself often enough you’ll begin to think they are real.
But, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. If they give you a more positive outlook on life, then the ���true��� stories you hear from others, or see on the TV, won’t have the same impact to cause you to feel depressed or downhearted.
Technorati Tags: the stories we tell ourselves, life stories, truth or fiction, why people tell stories, how to make your outlook more positive, human interest stories, why people embellish the facts, everyday fiction, boosting confidence
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment