Carefully Constructed Narratives

At any given moment, in places around the world, people interact with one another in good, bad, and indifferent ways.

Sometimes those moments change a person forever.

Sometimes, the interactions invoke an emotional response.

Other times, they are quickly forgotten.

No matter the outcome, there are always three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.

Everyone perceives an interaction differently. The moment goes through the various filters that a person has created based on their upbringing, values, morals, prejudices, and personality. Their perception of what transpired then becomes reality.

Very rarely do two people see a situation in the same, exact way. Because of who they are and what goes on in their mind, this is impossible. But that doesn’t mean how they perceive the moment is flawed. It’s just another perspective.

Sometimes, depending on what they experienced, they have a desire to share the moment with others. Maybe they want advice or an outside opinion about what happened. Maybe they want to share something funny or heartbreaking with a good friend. Perhaps, they just want to share a story.

Who Has the Right to Tell the Story?

In a perfect world, anyone would be able to tell any story that they wanted. They would be allowed to have a voice and take up space. They would be allowed to express what happened to them and how the moment made them feel.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, so more often than not, people’s stories and experiences are silenced.

One of the biggest reasons this happens is because one of the parties involved in the interaction has carefully constructed a narrative about their life that has led them to believe they are always the hero. They want to believe that everything they do is perfect and that they are perfect. If anyone tries to question that narrative or their motives, it distresses them beyond belief.

Everyone is entitled to their feelings. People are also allowed to view themselves in any way that they please.

If they want to believe they are the best thing that has ever graced the face of the Earth, who are the rest of us to question them?

If they want to believe that they were left here by aliens and that the mother ship will one day return to pick them up and take them home, who are the rest of us to say that it’s not true?

Again, our perception dictates our reality. It gives us a way to look at and understand the world and ourselves. It gives us meaning. It impacts who we are.

However, the issue arises when we think our perceptions are the only Truth and feel the need to silence others. When one person denies another person the ability to tell their story, this takes away their truth. It makes it seem like their perception of what happened isn’t as valuable or real as what the other person experienced.

Is this fair?

Absolutely not.

Is it right?

No. Everyone should be able to express themselves.

But it doesn’t matter if the act falls into these two categories or not.

It happens. All the time.

People are denied the ability to tell their stories because it threatens to undermine or shatter the carefully constructed narratives that many individuals have created. It’s scary to think that you may not be the perfect person you have convinced yourself to be.

Most of the time, the person who has developed this narrative about themselves doesn’t want to face reality, and they certainly don’t want anyone else thinking less of them, so they go out of their way to silence any narrative that portrays them in anything but a perfect light.

A World of Stories

Of course, when it comes to silencing others, most people don’t say, “Don’t tell anyone what happened. I don’t want them to know the real me.”

Oh, no.

They use threats, coercion, gaslighting, and a whole host of other underhanded techniques to ensure that the other person is afraid to tell their side of the story.

A lot of the time, it works.

But…inevitably, the truth always comes out.

There is always one person who defies the threats and confusion and lets their voice ring out. When that happens, it encourages others to step forward and share their stories as well. This creates an abundance of storytellers who are no longer afraid to keep their truths hidden.

The world is full of stories. Some are good, some are bad, some are indifferent. Some change the people who were involved, some are easily forgotten.

No matter what category a story falls into, a person should never be afraid to tell what happened to them. After all, it’s part of who they are, it’s how they perceive the world.

The person they are telling the story to gets to decide what they do with what they’re told (whether they believe it or not or decide to pass it on), but it doesn’t change the fact that the story happened and that the person it happened to has every right to speak their truth.

I Have the Best Ideas When I’m Half Awake

I know I’m not the only one this happens to. I know there are several of you out there who have made this same comment before. You’re in between deep sleep and waking up, but your mind is going a mile a minute. Ideas are rushing through your head at lightning speed, and you’re doing your best to hang onto them. This happens to me, too.

Sometimes I can hang onto them, and sometimes I can’t. But one thing I noticed is that most of them aren’t as good as I thought they were when I get up. And then I’m annoyed that I couldn’t sleep.

I am not a morning person. I never have been and I probably never will be. Ask my family. They’ll tell you what a treat I am in the morning. But the crazy thing about that is that I have to get up early. Between the kids and the dogs, sleeping in is incredibly rare. And during the week days, I’m up before 5:00 am four days a week so I can work out.

Granted, the boys are getting old enough now that they can keep themselves entertained and get their own breakfasts, so I don’t have to worry about them as much. But the dogs, they’re a different story. They can’t let themselves out or get their own food.

I feel like I’m getting a little better about being up in the morning. As long as no one talks to me unless I talk to them first, we’re good. And since I know I have to be up, I pep talk myself that it’s going to be an amazing day. I try to be tolerable in the morning. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

My days start early, and I’ve tried to adapt. But some days start even earlier with my brain working overtime. I’ve gotten some great story ideas when my brain does this, but more often than not, the ideas it comes up with are terrible. They’ll be fantastic at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, but when I’m fully awake and think them through, they’re awful.

There have been a few times when I thought I had a fantastic idea for a story that portrayed itself so vividly in my brain. All the details were there, how the words will form on the page, the opening lines. Then I wake up and think about them and realize the idea was my brain re-enacting a movie I watched or another story I had read that day. That’s really disappointing.

I’ll have hilarious ideas for Tweets to post the next day, but when I wake up, they’re not so funny. In fact, some of them are just confusing, and I question my unconscious brain. Does it really have that bad of a sense of humor?

But then there are other times when it works out in my favor. Life After the Undead was created after a moment like this. Ideas for promotion have come to me in my half-awake brain. I appreciate that my mind is constantly working and helping me become better, but sometimes I wish it would do it when I was awake.

Teens Will One Day Change the World

Last week, I read on io9 about an awesome Twitter trend. It’s called #VeryRealisticYA, and it points out the unrealistic way teens in young adult stories act. Some of the tweets are hilarious, and very spot on. They were fun to read. I laughed.

Young adult stories are often far stretches of the truth, along with a lot of other stories. But that’s the point: stories portray events or characters that don’t actually exist in the real world. They are created to entertain.

Of course the vast majority of teens in the real world aren’t going to act like Katniss or Tris. At one time, I was a teen, and I could barely look beyond the weekend to decide what to do with my life. Why would I even dream about saving the world?

But the point of these stories is to ask the question: what would teens be capable of if they weren’t self-absorbed?

One of the amazing things about teens is that they are an in between group. They are no longer children, but they aren’t yet adults. They are allowed certain freedoms to figure out who they are as a person or who they want to be. They have this freedom to experiment and make mistakes—all in the hope that one day they will become contributing members of society.

What is so fantastic about YA stories is that they propose this idea of who teens can be. They show them that they are capable of great and wonderful things. They show that they can change the world. They show that there is a larger world out there—and if they want to make an impact in it, they can. They are supposed to be inspiring.

More often than not, the reason we tell stories is to teach some kind of lesson. Fairy tales and children’s stories are notorious for teaching children how to share or what happens when they don’t follow the rules. It’s a way for society to pass their values and morals down in an entertaining fashion. Children don’t want to be lectured day in and day out, but if the lesson is fun and exciting, maybe a little surreal, kids are going to listen.

The same thing with adults. Life is hard. The world can be a cruel place. But stories allow us to escape and follow a character that is having a more difficult time than we are. And when that character overcomes those ordeals, we cheer her on and realize that maybe our lives aren’t that terrible or it gives us hope that we can also overcome hardships.

Teens are looking for the same kind of escape. They want to go to a place where they get to make up the rules and where they are in charge.

The vast majority of YA stories that are popular now are dystopian. They look at how the world has been destroyed and how it is rebuilding to be “better.” More often than not, there is a corrupt government that has to be taken down. And who is in charge of this government? Adults. All the other adults in the story are usually complacent and happy with the world they live in, it’s all they’ve know, but the teens refuse to follow the crowd. They question the status quo. They refuse to be mediocre.

What these stories do is take what happens in teens’ everyday lives and magnifies it. They are a reflection of society told metaphorically. Think about it. What is the biggest complaint you had as a teen? For me, it was that my parents controlled my life. They wouldn’t allow me to do what I wanted to do. I had to follow their rules when I lived in their house, so I rebelled against them. The teens in these stories aren’t doing anything different. They’re rebelling against the authority figure. They’re just doing it on a grander scale than a real-world teen.

Most teens aren’t on the streets with guns taking down the government, but they are staging protests. They are speaking out for their rights and making stands against injustice. They are changing the world, but in a quieter fashion than what these movies portray. Sure, the stories are incredibly grandiose and over the top—the complete opposite of reality—but that’s the point.  That’s what makes them entertaining.

I appreciate that YA novels portray teens in a way that isn’t typical of the real world. I enjoy that they are strong and overcome adversity. It gives teens something to aspire to. It reminds them that no matter what the world says, they are capable of great things. They just have to go out and get it.

How Would You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

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