Our story is all we really know

Johnny wrote,

Angel Hair Rows and Floss
And ice cream castle in the air
And canyons of feathers everywhere
I’m looking at the clouds like that

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So I used to do many things
But the clouds stood in my way

I am now looking at the clouds from two sides
From top to bottom, and still somehow
It’s the cloud illusion I recall
I don’t really know the clouds.”

We want to believe that our experience is consistent with the world.

They can’t be. Everything we encounter is filtered through what we know. And what we know comes from the human culture in which we live.

When someone turns you down for a job, they’re not rejecting you. How could they be? They don’t know you. Instead, they’re rejecting them the story In you, they (all of us) are the best guesses of the complex story we’ve woven ourselves into about our needs, dreams, and fears.

We take these stories and we combine them. We sharpen them, rehearse them, and turn them into an enhanced version of the world as we see it, not the world as it is.

If it doesn’t work for us, all we can do is start working hard to tell a new story, a better story, one that’s more useful.

The clouds are up on us.