July 16, 2026- The story can wait

Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Why let the truth get in the way of a good story? Even if it’s not a particularly good story, we tend to want to cling to it, simply because it’s ours.

How often do we walk away from a verbal disagreement fully acknowledging that the other person was right and we were wrong? How many times have we figured that out later? How much trouble may we have saved ourselves if we had just been willing to accept a story that was different from ours?

We are forever that young child who stands there with their arms folded, refusing to be told no. We stand, not on logic, but on principle. How could anyone who disagrees with us possibly ever think they are right? Obviously, if they would just stop talking at us and listen, they would come to realize how smart we are!

Isn’t that other person thinking exactly the same thing? Haven’t we been wrong before? Doesn’t at least a possibility exist in which we are wrong again this time?

Nothing happens in our lives without us telling ourselves a story about that thing. We can learn to have experiences without an automatic narrative. The story can wait until we have all the information. We can be wrong.