We pick apart incidents and events that happened to us and weave it back together in a way that makes sense to us — they become our Stories. We are then the Stories we tell about ourselves, though memories often do not make us reliable storytellers. The edges of yesterday and day before are softened by the considerate filters of time; as time shapes our perspectives and layers-in details that only gets revealed by time.
When I joined my second company, I didn’t realize back then that it would be a pivotal move in my career. I had just quit a dead-end job and accepted a pay cut to join them. A few years later, I could appreciate how the upgrade and the ‘brand value’ of this company helped me climb several rungs on the career ladder and opened multiple doors in the industry. However, when I narrate this success story, I conveniently omit the details of hardships — sleepless nights, demanding deadlines, sacrificed weekends, harsh criticisms behind closed doors, tears fought back, and tough negotiations that were essential for that steep learning curve to play out over the course of years.
Why do we tend to downplay the non-glamorous details of our stories over time? The very elements that make our stories engaging and compelling. Often, when we feel like we’re stuck in a losing game of Super Mario, constantly getting killed by menacing mushrooms and falling off cliffs, we are quick to forget that struggles and failures have almost always been the prerequisites for achieving anything worth having.
Another aspect of Stories is said better by my favorite quote from The Midnight library:
“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living...”
Oh, the perennial haunting of the ‘What Ifs’. If only I took that job and moved to that country, if only I got married to that person, if only I had worked harder in my 20s. we all have those ̶r̶e̶g̶r̶e̶t̶s̶ Stories — the Stories that never were, tucked safely into the folds of our mind, to be retrieved and examined on a rainy day when we are determined to ruminate.
My story of the Last Weekend in Europe, one of my favorite and most repeated, begins with a balance of 400 euros on my company card and a determination to make the most of my final weekend of a work trip to Europe. An elaborate plan was hatched to meet friends in Munich and visit the Neuschwanstein Castle. But as fate would have it, I left work five minutes late that Friday, chose the slower train to Brussels, and missed my subsequent train that would take me to my friends. Downcast, I walked through the rain, completely drenched and lost, having forgotten to carry my phone charger, and walked into the first hotel that didn’t look too shady to spend the night.
The next day, as fate would again have it, I remembered, completely randomly, from the archives of memory, that an old roommate lived in Brussels (thank you fb). I texted her on FB, to which she replied almost instantly. So, I visited her, got a guided tour of the city, and on her recommendation went on a solo trip to Bruges — the most gorgeous town in all of Europe. I did have my best Last Weekend in Europe, with euros to spare. Yet, I am sure if I had not missed that train, I would have had a different version of the Last Weekend in Europe, one involving catching up with old friends from school and touring castles that looked like Hogwarts.
Ultimately, I believe what ACTUALLY happened made for the better story.
That brings me to the latter half of the quote from The Midnight Library —
“We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
There is a lot of power and value in how we choose to narrate our Stories just like there are more than one way to connect the dots.
And as we are connecting those dots, we run into dead ends and wrong turns, we may not always feel like we have Stories worth telling, or that our Stories are too dark to tell. We often cannot interpret things that happen to us in the very moment that they are happening, it is often in retrospect we are able to make sense of our story. If your story is in the making, it may NOT make a whole lot of sense to you or others around you. When you find your story becoming boring, too predictable, or even a bit dark, there are things you could possibly do:
(1) Remind yourself that you are just not a character in your Story, but also the storyteller. Hardships can be paradoxical blessings, and time has the ability to provide a different perspective to today’s struggles. So do not let tragedy and circumstances dictate your Story like Rita Skeeter’s self-writing quill, painting you as the victim, rather, grab the pen and change the melancholic narrative to a more hopeful one. Does this mean that every story of struggle needs to be dressed up with a shiny bow? of course not! sometimes life hands us one too many sour lemons and that’s why...
(2) the second and better option, is to believe in a BIGGER story, one that involves a kind-hearted Author who originally designed the blueprint of our lives. When things go a bit out of control, maybe there is a God who will show up in your Story. And yes, choosing to believe in this option requires loads of humility, courage to bet against cultural opinions, challenge statistics, and a good measure of mustard-seed-sized faith.
It was stories of faith and redemption, narrated with authenticity and vulnerability, that shifted my perspective and guided me back to the right pathway in life, for which I am forever grateful. In a world that can often feel turbulent, perhaps your Story can serve as the runway light that guides someone else to safety and sanity.
