You Can(‘t) Make It Up

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Like those times when the sheer coincidence of things that are happening makes you feel like there’s a scriptwriter in the sky pulling your strings. Other times, fiction becomes our reality. This actually happens all of the time. This is what I’m thinking about today.

Fiction becomes reality when the stories we tell ourselves (and each other) stick in our brains. They can be good stories. They can be bad stories. But, whether or not you’re telling yourself what an idiot or a genius you are, it’s important to realize just how much impact these stories have as we turn them into truths.

It can help by sorting stories into external and internal buckets.

External stories happen to us. We have no say in them happening. They exist independent of us. We can’t make those up.

Internal stories, which usually start with our reactions to external events, are under our control. We actually have a say in making up how we want and are going to feel about them. It doesn’t always feel this way, but it’s true.

For all the self-talk in our heads, it’s our option and choice to make sure it skews positive. It’s our option and choice to make our own myths to live into. It’s our option and choice to remember the events aren’t what matters, but our reaction to them, because – life goes on.

Life. Goes. On.

ps. and, as the poet/philosopher’s Bad Religion once sang,

The world is scratching at my doorMy morning paper has the scoresThe human interest storiesAnd the obituary, oh yeah.Cradle for a cat, Wolfe looks backHow many angels can you fit upon a match?I want to know why Hemingway crackedSometimes truth is stranger than fiction.Life is the crummiest book I ever readThere isn’t a hook, just a lot of cheap shotsPictures to shock and characters an amateurWould never dream up.Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction