The Problem With Stories

"Do I really have to follow some kind of narrative-- can't I just live?"  -- Tyler Cowen

There's a strange little TED talk by Tyler Cowen, author of Marginal Revolution, that fits in really nicely with the way I've been thinking and living lately.  It's about stories, and narratives, and why we should be a little suspicious of them.

Our brains are hard-wired for stories.  And not just the particular bundles of narrative that we call stories, like Br'er Rabbit or The Time Grandpa Stepped In The Pumpkin Pie.  We tell the stories of our lives to each other constantly, when we answer questions like, "what did you do today?" or "why did you move to Cleveland?"  There's a social expectation that we be able to summarize any given part of our lives as a story, and here's the part we never talk about: the story has to fit within an acceptable narrative structure. It's not acceptable, in most crowds, to tell a story that ends with, "because my golden retriever suggested it while we were having breakfast."

In his talk, Tyler talks about surveying people to choose a narrative structure (journey, battle, race, etc) as a metaphor for their life story.  "When asked to describe their lives," Tyler says, "what's interesting is how few people said 'mess.'"  I noticed that the subtitle of my own blog is "A journey from an unhappy job into the great unknown..."  It's as close as I could bring myself to what I really knew was, "The big messy mess that is my life right now."  Labeling the whole enterprise as a "journey" promises a better story: eventually, the main character will arrive at some destination, and at that point, all the little adventures along the way will make sense.

Messiness isn't a bad thing, it just makes for bad stories.  There's a scene early on in The Shawshank Redemption, when Andy is first attacked, where the narrator tells us:

I wish I could tell you that Andy fought the good fight, and the Sisters let him be.  I wish I could tell you that, but prison is no fairy-tale world.

It's a great device, and part of what makes the movie so beautiful.  Justice and injustice aren't served at the times we'd like them to be-- it's not that kind of story.  We all know, though, that something will happen to Andy, that the story will resolve.  If the movie ended right there, we'd be very disturbed.  "Well, what happened to Andy?"  "Oh, I don't know, I guess he just kept getting attacked, or something."

My friend S and I are on similar, messy journeys right now.  We can't tell you how or when our stories will resolve, because we're not headed in any particular direction.  And we've noticed just how uncomfortable people get when we describe our current positions in an honest way.  We've each got things we're passionate about, and projects that fill up our days, but if there's any great sign in the road or major epiphany ("... and that's when I knew I wanted to become a clog dancer!"), it hasn't made itself known to us yet.  And people hate that.  They hate the fact that the story doesn't have a clear direction right now.

Years from now, we'll tell our own stories of how we got to wherever we're going, and we'll tell them with in a simple cause-and-effect way: "It was during that time that I met Sally, and she showed me how to make yogurt, and the rest is history!"  As if somehow the very purpose of walking away from our corporate jobs was to end up in that Whole Foods on that particular Tuesday.  (If that is, in fact, the purpose, it doesn't make a good story in today-time: "I'm wandering around because I think the universe wants to me meet some stranger who'll introduce me to some product or activity that will shape my life, and I'll never meet that person if I'm stuck in the office all day, will I?")

I'm always a little jealous, and a little suspicious, of people who have simple, pat stories about their lives.  Stories told in the past tense have the benefit of selection: details that don't fit the narrative can be discarded, and those that do fit can be emphasized.  What's left is a story that goes really nicely from point A to point B, with maybe a couple of chosen deviations to hold our attention.   It's not that I don't believe in love-at-first-sight, I just always wonder, "How many other girls did you fall in love-at-first-sight with that day, and then fell out-of-love with the next moment when they didn't meet your gaze?"  I can hardly get in and out of the Target without it happening a few times.

The reason I bring all this up is because, if you ever find yourself on such a journey, wandering off in random directions and uncertain what kind of story to tell about your life, you'll find that there's an enormous amount of social pressure to get back onto some narrative-- any narrative-- as soon as possible.  Many people would actually prefer a sad, painful story to one that's uncertain.  Writing "I don't know" as the reason on your leave-of-absence application is a radical act, trust me.

I'm writing today to defend the messiness.  Don't live your life like you're writing a screen play, always looking for the hero or the villain, the cause and the effect.  Just do your thing, let your freak flag fly, and trust that the stories will come.  If people are uncomfortable that your life doesn't fit some familiar storyline, just tell them, "To be continued..."