fact hoarder or storyteller?
i recently played a game of trivia and lost very badly. many of the questions asked for useless facts that i don’t care to know. name the queen of this country from this year, name the herb used in this little-known dish, etc… trivia knowledge is a bag of facts, a huge mental database of disconnected information. surely, no sane person could keep this all in their minds?
i think the secret must be storytelling. this is how many religions explain their central tenets and how many cultures pass down their traditions. stories tell us what is important and why. how did that queen come into power? what did she accomplish while she reigned? where is that herb cultivated and what sets it apart?
some stories are more interesting than others. true stories are just history. where would we be without history, without this rich knowledge of paths travelled, victories hard-earned, mistakes made, and bridges burned? but human history is unbelievably complex. how can we even begin to tell it? many history classes fail to communicate the rich context that would ground our understanding of the major events of a given time period in the heart and soul of the nations involved. my people would die for these rights. my people had nothing to lose. my people are thirsty for revenge.
that being said, a narrative can easily run away from you until it no longer fits the facts. we tell ourselves all sorts of stories to cope with our place in the world. a good story anchors itself in reality, picking out fact by fact out of the bag and weaving them into a cohesive whole that explains and reinforces each fact in turn. a bad story twists the facts around or fabricates its own facts.
i hope you can see how stories can be life-changing. turn inwards now. what do you think is fact about your life? which of those are actually an often-repeated story in our heads? do you even have an idea of who you are and what you’re doing here? when you lose track of the bag of facts, your story goes off the rails. when you lose track of the story, your bag of facts becomes cluttered and inaccessible. what to do?
find your balance. meditate on significant new learnings so they can deeply permeate your consciousness and update all your beliefs. examine your story and examine your facts. learn who we are, us, humans, our history, your history, and only then you may understand who you are and where we’re going.