Life is the sum of the story we tell ourselves.  This is it. This is how we make sense of the world.  

    Marketers seek to influence the story we tell ourselves.  

    Movie makers exaggerate our stories in artful ways. 

    Social movements call forward the stories of those without platforms.  

    College and Universities confer upon us a story of belonging and history. Go State!

    Pastors call us to the Great Story. 

Only we can choose the story we live.  Certainly, we can’t choose all of the events or characters, but we do get to write the impact and influence each has in our story — my story.  

And yet there are times where the information in front of us doesn’t match the story within us.  

Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance: the person I believe I am doesn’t behave in ways like this, so how do I reconcile the discord of what I believe and what I see?  Our brains are built for harmony and our souls for integrity and discord doesn’t sit well with either.  This stands true for self and others.  And yet our realities often show us something different.  This is the work we must do to make sense of the world, but how do we do that? 

One shorthand is to look to others for their sense-making reconciliations.  Clubs and gangs tell a collective story, which become their ideology and guiding narrative.  These collective stories have been told since some ‘me’ became ‘we’.  As an alum of the State school, I was told that the alumni from the Tech school would make great employees because they weren’t capable of winning football games or getting dates, therefore they had nothing to do but work.  Cute, but only when it remains a joke.  I don’t really believe this because all of the information in front of me says otherwise (and neither do those that told this story, for the record).  But what do we do when the questions aren’t about collegial extracurriculars.  

How do we make sense of information that doesn’t fit our narrative?  

    We can take the heuristic without critical thinking (called stereotyping). 

    We can disregard the inconvenient facts (called denial). 

    We can force fit the facts into our narrative (called lying).

    We can listen to another’s narrative (called empathy). 

    We can momentarily suspend judgement and check our story (called wisdom). 

But just because the information in front of me doesn’t immediately match my story, doesn’t mean I should throw out the facts or the story wholesale.  

    This is the work of maturing: the more I learn, the less I know.  

    This is the work of empathy: what led you, my friend, to your understanding of this situation

    This is the work of humility: perhaps the narrative through which I understand the world isn’t as simple as I thought. 

    This is the work of leadership: clarity in confusion, anchoring to a more true story.

    This is the work of history: what led us collectively to this point in the story.