Rumbling with our stories

I am still working my way through the book Rising Strong - although I haven't made much progress lately.  Just one chapter. That's what happens when you find a novel that distracts you!  Anyway...

Have you ever noticed that we build stories around what we observe - what we experience? We are by nature storytellers, and when there are gaps in what we know, we fill them in. We build the rest of the story.

For example, say that you have an appointment with someone, and that person is running late - very late - and you decide that the other person doesn't respect you. You are low down on her list of priorities, and so you get angry with her. You build the story in your mind - maybe based on your own insecurities - and for some of us, this story becomes truth. There can be no other explanation. "If I were important enough in her life, she would be on time." The real truth is she had a flat tire, and she was dealing with that, and she forgot the appointment - not out of any disrespect, but just because life was too big at that moment.

We tell ourselves stories to fill in the gap.  The trick is to realize that, and to begin to try to understand the stories we tell. In that understanding comes truth about not only the world around us, but also truth about who we are. We come to understand ourselves better and to have a better understanding of the world around us. Brene Brown calls this struggle rumbling.