The Stories We Tell

The following is from Rituparna Ghosh’s newsletter:

Here are three stories that we tell. The first, the story we tell ourselves. The second, the story we tell others. The third, the story others tell about us.

I couldn’t help but think of this as a 2 x 2 framework. There are two components - self and others. So, there are four possibilities of communication.

The kind not mentioned above: the stories others tell us.

Subconsciously, the stories we tell could be influenced by the stories others tell about us. We learn from others, how to better narrate our own.

There is this idea of the Looking-Glass Self that proposes that our sense of self is shaped by how we think others perceive us. I feel all of these lines of communication, all directions of this 2 x 2 framework, feed into one another.

We take all this communication as input for crafting the next version, the updated draft, the “final” version of our stories, prepared carefully for the next retelling.

And the stories others tell about us - you could loosely call it gossip, maybe?

I feel gossip is the grease that moves the civilisation. As humans, we have that voyeuristic curiosity, that tendency to want to peek into the lives of others. We take part in this activity, sometimes with primal passion.

Some days, when the devil enters the empty mind to begin his work, he takes you on that investigation into the lives of others. Or do you take him? I don’t know how the dynamics work here. But in any case, all of this seems very naturally human.