the stories you tell about yourself

Aug 27

Dear Reader,

A woman I worked with told me she was terrible at keeping in touch with people. A few months later, in a completely different conversation, she said it again, and I noticed she used exactly the same words both times. Not the same idea, the same sentence. It came out smooth, the way a line does when it's been said a lot.

Most of us have a few of those. Short descriptions we reach for when we need to explain ourselves quickly, and they tend to be about our limits. I'm not a morning person. I've never been good with money. I'm the one who takes a while to warm up to people. They arrive fully formed because we've said them so often, and after enough repetitions they stop sounding like opinions and start sounding like information.

They also shape what you notice, which is easy to miss. Once you've settled on being bad with names, the times you blank on one stand out and the times you remember don't register. The story keeps gathering support for itself, and we're the ones doing the gathering without much awareness of it.

The useful thing about these lines is that you can actually catch yourself saying them. So much of what we've been looking so far has to be pieced together from the outside, but this one comes out of your own mouth, usually in the middle of an ordinary conversation, and if you're paying attention you can hear how practiced it sounds.

So this week, just listen for yours. The sentences about yourself that come out smooth, that you've clearly said before. Whether they're accurate is a question for another time. For now it's enough to hear how quickly they arrive, and to wonder how long you've been saying them.

Yours in the journey,