The Stories We Tell: How Our Narratives Shape the World
Everyone is a storyteller.
Whether we’re speaking aloud or thinking silently, whether we’re writing code or leading prayer, we’re telling stories — about who we are, what’s possible, what’s safe, what matters.
And most of the time, we don’t even realize it.
From your inner monologue to your conversations with friends, from the headlines you skim to the childhood beliefs you never questioned — it’s all narrative. It’s how the human mind organizes reality. But here’s the thing:
Every story we tell is incomplete.
And some are so incomplete, they become dangerous.
The Incomplete Stories We Inhabit
No one can tell the whole story — not you, not me, not even science or scripture. The full story of reality is too vast, too multi-dimensional, too full of paradox and complexity for any single frame to hold it.
That’s not a design flaw. It’s a spiritual truth. We are fragments of a whole we can never fully grasp. But that doesn’t mean all stories are equal.
Some stories point us toward greater wholeness.
Others fracture us further.
The Cost of a Small Story
Let’s make this real.
Imagine someone whose core belief — their foundational inner narrative — is this:
“People are bad. You can’t trust anyone.”
They didn’t invent that story. It was shaped by pain, by experience, by the nervous system doing what it had to do to survive. And if we knew their full story, we’d probably understand it.
But it’s still not true — not fully.
That narrative filters out goodness. It blocks intimacy. It turns love into a threat. And unless it’s examined, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We all have these kinds of stories.
They live below the surface.
They masquerade as facts.
They run our lives — until we become aware of them.
The Bigger Blind Spot: Collective Myth
Now zoom out.
At the cultural level, we’ve been swimming in another story — one that might be even more destructive:
“Life is a zero-sum game. For me to win, someone else must lose.”
You can trace the fingerprints of this belief through almost every system we’ve built. Politics. Economics. Education. War. Even religion, at times.
Here’s just one example:
On a planet with more than enough food to nourish every human being, 20,000 people — mostly children — die of hunger each day.
That’s not a resource issue.
It’s a story issue.
A shared, unexamined narrative — that scarcity is real, that power requires domination, that someone has to lose — is literally killing us.
What Makes a Story “Good”?
A good story doesn't mean feel-good.
A good story isn’t simply inspiring or poetic.
A good story holds more perspectives.
It allows complexity.
It humbles the ego.
It points us toward connection, not separation.
If you're only seeing one angle, you're not telling the truth — you're telling a version. But when you can include the view of the scientist and the poet, the skeptic and the seer, the laborer and the mystic — you’re getting closer to something sacred.
The more perspectives a story can hold, the more healing it becomes.
Living in the Questions
So here’s the invitation:
Start noticing your stories.
What’s the story I’m telling about myself?
About the people I distrust?
About what’s possible in this world?
About love? God? Worth? Safety?
And deeper still:
Where did these stories come from?
What blind spots are they hiding?
What would change if I let them soften?
You don’t need to discard your stories. You just need to hold them lightly — with curiosity, with reverence, and with a willingness to revise.
The Path Forward
We’re not here to cling to inherited myths.
We’re here to participate in the evolution of consciousness.
That means making the unconscious conscious.
That means examining the water we’re swimming in.
That means upgrading the stories we live by — personally, culturally, spiritually.
No story will ever be complete.
But they can become more inclusive.
They can become more beautiful.
They can become more true.
And that’s a sacred task — one we’re all called to.
Be well.
