The Stories We Tell

This 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 players - self and others. So, there are four possibilities of communication.

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

If you think about it - subconsciously, the stories we tell could be influenced by the stories others tell 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. We can think of this as a constant stream of information: we see others, we talk about others, others talk to us and somewhere in all of this, we zoom out, to form an image of ourselves.

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 makes the civilisation move. 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.

“Oh, uska kiske saath chal raha hai chakkar?” (Oh, who’s X dating these days?) “Paisa toh bohat sahi mil raha hoga usko” (I’m sure he’s minting money)

Some days, the devil enters your empty mind and begins his work. He takes you on that investigation into the private lives of others (Or do you take him? I don’t know how the dynamics work here).

In all this noise about others, there is that one moment. You’re about to ask yourself some tough, uncomfortable questions. Feeling uneasy? No problem, social media feeds exist so that you don’t have to spend time with these thoughts.

In that fleeting moment, as you see the dark screen for a second before the next shot of dopamine loads, while you wait for the network in the metro to connect you to the matrix, you see the thoughts you’ve been pushing away all this while. But don’t worry, just swipe up!

However someday, if you decide to step out of the comfort, you realise that much of getting here was mostly failing “successfully”, trying to capture that perfect photo as you race to that imaginary finish line - that you, or someone else, setup for you, only to realise the pointlessness of the damn thing. If you did realise it, that’s a win too! You’re just looking into the mirror and making small adjustments. Don’t worry, you look great!