For every thing in life that happens, every event large or small, we could call that a story. And every event is a small story in the larger story that we call life. The events in your life, your experiences are your personal story. But for everything that happens, unless you are the only one having the experience (which is highly unlikely), there are as many stories as there are people. And there are never two stories which are exactly alike.
Your perception of an event is based on your life experiences, but it also depends on things such as where you are in relation to the event, how many details can you see, hear, etc. Even when you are standing inches away from another person watching the same event, your story of that event will not be exactly the same as the other person. It is impossible. Let’s say, for example, you and your best friend go to a concert. You are sitting right next to each other watching the same bands, hearing the same music, seeing the same stage show. But maybe your seat has a slight view of backstage and your friend has a better view of the stage. Different seats, different view, different stories.
Life is exactly like this. In every situation it is absolutely impossible for anyone to have the exact same perspective. However, our ego, our human concept of “I” demands that we have to be right. In our individual world our viewpoint is the only right story. Countless disagreements have occurred in every relationship we have because of our demand to have “our” story be the story. Wars have started over political demands to be right. Lives have been lost in countless ways, relationships have dissolved, families ties have been severed over one person demanding to be right over everyone else.
If we want to help make our world a better place, we must start with ourselves. And one of the first places to start is to recognize that our story may not be complete. Our perspective on an event may not be correct. We may not have all the details, we might have missed something that we couldn’t have seen from our viewpoint at the time. We must be willing to be open to the possibility, the probability, that we don’t have all of the information, that we are missing some details, and those details may be key to finding the truth of the full story.
We may never know the full truth of any story, but if we keep ourselves open to hearing the viewpoints of other people, we increase our chances of learning the everyone’s story, the story of the world.
Blessed Be.
The Warriors Den 