Story Is Our Baseline, But It Requires Endless Rewrites - Just Ask the Deer

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The other day, I came upon three deer — a mom and two fawns. They didn’t move, didn’t budge, since many deer won’t flinch around here, having grown accustomed to humans. Instead, they stared, dumbstruck, absorbed by the sight of me.

What is that? It’s odd. Obviously, one of “them”, but this one is dancing with its arms and hands to a sound coming from a device tucked in its bra.

(That’s my word interjected there. Deer don’t know the word “bra”.)

I, too, was dumbstruck at the sight of these stationary deer. Between the four of us, there was much awe and confusion. We clearly wanted to know more. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have stood there doing nothing but gawk.

We each had some kind of story running through our heads, though I have no idea what kind of story deer tell. Is it in grunts or bleats? My story included shock at how much the relationship has changed between humans and wild animals living in suburban regions. It included an anthropomorphizing view of the deer, imagining their confusion as how it would feel inside me.

But as much as we tried to understand the other, we couldn’t. Our stories were too different, and we had no common language with which to tell and hear, not to mention comprehend. More accurately, humans have story as their baseline, while deer, well, I have no idea, but I’m guessing there’s not much.

For us, life is a story, whether we know our story, tell it, or hide it. More so, we’re usually sure of our story and those of others. In fact, we can be so certain of the narrative in our minds, we’ll even insert our viewpoint into the mind of a deer. Our natural go-to when it comes to creating understanding: story and certainty. But, while it gets us so far down the road of comprehension, it’s also flawed.

Pro tip: look up “List of cognitive biases” on Wikipedia. If, like me, you had no idea there were that many, I’m not sure you’ll thank me for this tip. It’s unsettling.

It’s not an intuitive concept that our take on things has so many potential flaws. It feels so wrong. Being sure is being grounded. But we need to feel certain extremely quickly to survive. The other option? Standing stultified in the middle of the wide-open savannah, vulnerable and quite delicious.

Despite how imperfect, though speedy, our system of making sense is, we have a counter-balancing path to greater levels of truth: question what we see as facts, wonder what else could be true, and look at the numbers. This is how truly great stories are written, and I’ve been trying to write the story that lives in my head this way for a while.

It’s effortless to see myself and others from a constant, knee-jerk viewpoint. Why would I make things harder on myself? Yet, it wasn’t that complicated to open my mind to new points of view. Once I tried it, I discovered how mind-blowing it is and how life-changing.

Sometimes it’s a shock to the system because changing the story in our heads might also lead to a change in our self-identity, which is a wobbly feeling. But I found I preferred a broader story in my head to a more particular one. It made for a far more interesting story, which made for a more challenging tutorial on life. The greater the challenge, the greater the learning.

At first, broadening the story in my head was something I had to remember to do, since I wanted to try it out thanks to my coaching training. Soon, it was something I tended to do. The motivation was there, thanks to how fascinating it feels to open the mind. Curiosity seriously rocks. Eventually, it became part of the definition of who I am. I like to think this way. It might not be splashy or popular — the more certain you can say you are, the more eye-catching you become — but it’s cool.

I’m not an obsessive questioner of everything, but in the back of my mind, there’s always this knowledge that multiple viewpoints of the same thing are constantly cycling around each other. This is because everyone brings their uniquely constructed brains, each composed of a specific set of experiences and genetic makeup, to the story they write and then tell.

While we’re all coming from a different place, we’re not deer. We’re human. We have one thing that binds us no matter what — the need to turn complex reality into a story so we can make sense of it. I’m no neuropsychologist, but I figure the authors of my story are these: my memory, imagination, imprint of past experience, bias, and needs. These ladies co-author what appears as true in my head. They each have a role, and one might take over when the other is napping.

For the longest time, the story in my head told of how terrifying it was to speak up in a group. This was because of the danger involved. As soon as I spoke, the group would know how unworthy I was of its membership. Then, bad stuff would happen, namely judgment and rejection.

Ms. Memory did background research for this story, then Ms. Imagination spent much effort writing it up and had a byline on the published piece. But she got it all wrong, and I told her so. She was a team player, though, and set to work on a rewrite, one in which I was inherently worthy, and in which simple, respectful contribution to a group discussion was not only safe, but possibly helpful for others. She added the part where respectful contribution to a group builds rapport. I thought that was brilliant.

Lately, it appears people feel at terrible odds with each other’s stories about the world, but this doesn’t mean the stories floating around must be a permanent thing. It just means there is an opportunity to ask our in-house authors to look at the stories they’ve written with fresh eyes. What else could be true about the world, about others’ viewpoints, about our choices for what we believe to be true? And how much does wanting something to be true influence the characters, plot, outcome, and theme of our life story? Do we write off others because of this? Or worse, ourselves?

These days, my inner authors are busy working on their eight-hundredth draft of my life story, give or take. I multiplied sixty years by 12 (one new draft per month), then threw in a few more. I’m grateful to those ladies. They’re doing the best they can with what they have to work with — my insight, education, curiosity, generosity, acceptance, willingness. I’m their avid reader.

I look forward to getting my hands on what they write about those three deer. I’m sure Ms. Comic will want to illustrate the piece. She’s a hoot. She draws owls, too.

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Hope you're well, friends.

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