The Need to Understand that Every Story Is Incomplete

If you are old enough to remember the 1980s, you’ll probably remember the choose your own adventure books that were popular during that decade. The idea was simple: a book would have multiple paths that led to different endings. As you read, you could choose where to go next. The cheap books had stories that concluded within a few pages. The better ones led you down well lit paths on multiple adventures that could take hours (or days) to fully explore.

Some of those books were not well edited and you would occasionally find one that led to either a literal or figurative dead end; a line of “adventure” that led to an ending that made no sense or that looped back on itself because of a typo on a page number.

In third-person literature, the narrator is omniscient. That is, the narrator knows things — often shares things with the reader— that the characters in the story can’t know. Even when recounting non-fiction, historical events, the author knows the outcome whereas the people involved in those events don’t know how things will play out. To the outsider, the outcome might seem a forgone conclusion.

We often view each other’s lives as though we are the omniscient narrator of their story; that we have somehow been endowed with power to look at another’s life and figure out where they’ve gone wrong and what they’ve done right. We reason, they are where they are because of their choices and actions alone.

One of my favorite authors, in a very old text, wrote, “I do not desire that [you] should suppose that I mean to judge you only according to that which is true.”

Why would he write that? Is he insinuating that we should judge each other based on what isn’t true?

For most of us, challenging our own perceptions is difficult, and when not challenged our perceptions become our reality. For example, I’ve worked with a man who has had a lot of good ideas in the past. Consequently, his confirmation bias — his perception of his ability to have good ideas that play out well — is off the charts. Others might have good ideas, but if he believes his idea is better, he’s close-minded about considering other options. Because he’s been right so many times in the past, it’s clear (to him) that his ideas are always best.

Often, then, we judge things based on what is not true at all. Our perceptional biases skew our ability to interpret what’s in front of us with an open mind. My coworker might have an idea that ends up being a failed one. Because of perceptional bias, the failure comes about because of external factors, not because his idea was flawed.

I hope you can see that my own perceptional bias shows up in how I interpret the perceptional bias of my coworker. He’s a coworker that I routinely struggle with, so my own bias is that he is somewhat self-centered and even narcissistic.

I’m not a neurologist, psychologist, or any other type of -gist for that matter, but it seems that our brains are wired to interpret things based on our perception. Life would be utterly overwhelming if our brains couldn’t run on autopilot most of the time.

Where that autopilot often fails us, however, is in regards to other people. Even people judged as shallow have incomprehensible depth because of what they have experienced. The stories of others are far more important than we realize or generally stop to consider. Often, we’re not great judges of our own selves because of our inability to fathom the impact that all our circumstances, thoughts, and experiences have had on us.

We stop to consider important decisions, we challenge thoughts that suggest abrupt and significant change, and we reflect (sometimes ruminate) on impactful experiences and the lessons we can learn from those experiences, but even our autopilot decisions have an influence on who we are and who we will become. There are so many of those autopilot decisions that, at least in part, we are not in control of who we become.

Does that mean self-control is futile and we should abandon hope and let our lives unfold like an unguided raft through the Grand Canyon rapids? Absolutely not! Without a level of self-control and self-guidance, society would devolve into complete chaos. There can be no order without self-control.

If who we are and who we become is so difficult for each of us to control, what mechanism leads any of us to believe we are capable of judging another person completely? What do we feel give us the right to write the end of someone else’s story?

Perhaps it’s our own discomfort with the inherently unpredictable nature of life and how unforeseen circumstances can influence its course. What we need, then, is to get more comfortable with the complex and dynamic nature of our own lives, stop trying to write other’s stories, and love with more compassion instead.