EVERYBODY'S GOT A STORY

Everybody’s got a story.

This is easy to confirm.  Just ask the next American you meet, stranger or friend, “So, what’s your story?”  Be prepared to spend the next several minutes (or hours) listening American Life Stories.  

Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider and his uncle is murdered, and he becomes Spiderman.  Bruce Wayne loses his parents in a similar fashion and as heir to a lot of money and some sort of ninja training becomes the Batman.  A guy is born with the miraculous mutant ability to heal, the government abducts him and adamantium-plates his bones, and voila, Wolverine.  

I listen to a few different interview format podcasts, and I’ve noticed that like superheroes, the guests always have a well-rehearsed “origin story.”  

“This happened, and then this happened, and then I did this, and that is why I’m now this way.”

I’m not buying it.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t believe that person is intentionally lying.  I’m just not buying the causality.  

It’s a lot like saying, “I washed my hair and didn’t dry it and then I went outside in a t-shirt and it was snowing, so I caught a cold.”

Maybe.  

But actually, you have no idea why you caught a cold.  Could have been because you touched the overhead bar on the Tokyo subway and then absentmindedly bit your fingernail on the same hand and thereby introduced the germs of a million Tokyoites into your body.  

One of my friends is a doctor and when I asked him the best way to avoid getting sick he told me, “Never touch anything on a subway.” 

So this story, the story of your life, this narrative you’ve constructed about how things are and why they are that way, is not objectively true.  It’s just a story.  Albeit one you must like.  I mean, it’s your story, right?

If you don’t like it, just rewrite it.  

You could have several different versions of the story of why you are the way you are, and pull a different one out depending on what audience you are playing to.  

You could rewrite your story right now.  During the pause between this sentence and the next.

Huh.

The “Spring Jumbo” lottery is going on in Japan right now.  For 30 bucks I get a chance at winning 5 million dollars.  

I’ve heard it said that buying a lottery ticket is like paying a “stupidity tax” due to the minuscule odds of winning.   That sounds sort of clever.  It also seems clever to me to point out that if one doesn’t buy a lottery ticket, one will not win the lottery 100% of the time.

What you’re really buying when you buy a lottery ticket is a few minutes of fantasizing about what it would be like to win the lottery before you fall asleep at night.  You’re buying the story of what your life would be like if you had 5 million dollars.  That’s a fun story to tell, even if it’s only to your self.  

For the record, I have two personal acquaintances who have won the lottery.  

Doesn’t seem so stupid to me.