We All Lead Our Own Stories

Perhaps one of the most fascinating things about people en masse is the fact that we are all our own separate story.

Our world is filled to the brim with stories, and we are all the protagonists of our own. The genre changes by the week or by the month or by the minute even. Sometimes, we are caught in horror stories or tragedies, and our lives are characterized by fear or loss or sadness. Sometimes, we are swept up in romantic comedies for a time, or maybe inspirational dramas, where we’re the underdog just struggling for recognition, striving to reach that happy ending so we can move on to the next chapter in our lives.

And just like with any well-written story, we are all three-dimensional characters. Every last one of us have a motivation for our actions, a reason to do it. Some of our motivations are better than others. Sometimes we are motivated by fear or anger or bitterness or a plain-and-simple bad mood. But, end of day, we all have a motivation, and we all believe that our motivations are good enough.

We are all the protagonists of our own stories, and so we are all just trying to be heroes. We want to overcome our obstacles, to come out stronger in the end and make a difference in the world. Sometimes we’ll settle for the role of anti-hero to get what we want, but nobody ever sets out to be a one-dimensional, cut-and-dry villain.

Nobody acts without motivation. Nobody intends to be cruel for the sake of cruelty, not unless they are really and truly hurt as human beings. Nobody is any less than a detailed and well-told story of varying genres.

And one thing that really bugs me, something that is growing as a pet peeve of mine, is when people forget all that.

And sometimes it’s not only easy but necessary to forget all that, but I’m talking about some pretty intense situations here. I’m talking about times when you have been hurt deeply by someone, and when forgiveness just isn’t possible quite yet. When the only way that you can fully rationalize what they did to you is by telling yourself that they’re simply evil, and that’s all there is to it. In situations such as these, I cannot bring myself to look down upon a hurt person who is still dealing with a fresh trauma, but these are not the situations that I am talking about.

I am talking about the people that we do not know, the stories that we have not yet been told, and yet we dismiss them so quickly, without even a thought.

I’m talking about seeing a girl in a public space wearing a bikini, and immediately dismissing her as a “dumb slut” without even considering any other alternatives – maybe she was just at the beach? Maybe she is really self-conscious about her body and trying to come to terms with how it looks? Maybe she’s really, really hot? Who knows, and more importantly, who are you to judge?

I’m talking about seeing someone standing too close to something dangerous, and rather than trying to help them, dismissing them as “stupid” and “deserving to be hurt”, but maybe they don’t even know that this is dangerous?

I’m talking about hating someone because of the way that their face looks. I’m talking about telling others that you want to punch someone because of something small and trivial that they keep doing, like smiling or looking your way. I’m talking about deciding that someone else is “no good” or “up to something” because they dress a certain way.

I’m talking about judging someone else as worthless without even knowing anything about them.

And one of the greatest reasons why this has become a pet peeve of mine is because it creates such an intense air of negativity. It creates enemies out of people who are just leading their own lives. It makes the one doing the judging think so much worse of people, because they are so much quicker to hate them. And I don’t want any part of that.

I’m not saying that all people are good or trustworthy, but all people are people. They have reasons for the things that they do, and you won’t always know their reasons. You might never find out that the girl annoying you with her public crying cannot control her panic attack and is at her wit’s end with the story she is leading, but that doesn’t make it any less real. That doesn’t make her story any less valuable or important. And it doesn’t make us any better to look down on her for it.