You Are NOT the Main Character
We have a sense that our story, our narrative, is the most important one. To us, it is. It is THE story. We deeply feel all our own pain, joy, pride, and shame. It is meaningful to consider life a narrative that built around your identity and how others interact with you. Human beings crave narrative, and they usually consider themselves the hero of their own story.
Feeling like the main character is a natural part of your experience as a person. You are the primary actor in your life. You are the one who reacts to inputs and defines the next line of dialogue or movement of action. The narrative you build is based on your experiences and inner monologue.
However, your story is just one story. Everyone around you also has a story. In those stories, you are a supporting character or merely an unnamed extra, wandering in the background with little significance.
How would life change if you considered the stories of others more thoroughly, and became the best supporting character in someone else’s story?
Your Early Narrative Players
Understanding your own story and the players in it can help you clarify your role in the stories of others. For many of this, a good place to start is our parents. If you have some time for consideration, I would suggest thinking about some of the questions below to give you a start.
A good line of questioning could start like this, describing your experience of them:
What did your day to day life look like in your family unit?
Did you feel like the center of attention, was it a sibling, themselves, or was there balance?
Did you enjoy spending time with them?
Was conflict between you prominent?
How do you feel about them? Why?
You could continue this with your understanding of their inner lives:
Who seemed to be important to your parent(s), and how did they show it?
What sacrifices did they make, and did those sacrifices improve their life, the lives of those around them, or both?
How did pain, loss, success, failure, and trauma shape their behavior?
What were their hopes and dreams, and did they achieve them?
And finally, describe their experience of you:
Did they enjoy spending time with you?
Were you able to agree and disagree in a healthy way?
How did their values clash with your values?
How do they feel about you?
Choosing parents is a great way to start to understand the concept I am trying to share, because we all have taken our parents for granted, shrunk the wholeness of their being to their observable behavior, or mapped them as a one dimensional villain opposing us for some unknown reason.
Stories need heroes and villains, and as children our most accessible villains are the ones in our story regularly.
Key Roles
Good stories feature a hero and villain, and also have supporting characters that play key roles in the story. For instance:
a mentor may teach the hero key skills, guide them through an obstacle, or help them find their identity
friends, comrades, or allies may be aligned with your story for a time and provide support or encouragement
a love interest may propel the hero by providing motivation, connection, or a reason to change the status quo
a “foil” may be there to create a contrast of assumptions, values, or character
an example may show the character what success or failure looks like
enemies or opponents provide opposition or resistance, sometimes passively and sometimes actively
When you consider someone else’s story, ask yourself what role or roles you play in their story. It is possible to move from one role to another in their story if you can understand how they perceive you and what their narrative is.
Stories We Tell Together
We also have collective stories in which we play a part. Here are a few examples, several or all of which could apply to one person:
Family unit
Sports team(s)
Religious group
Company or school affiliation
Career or trade (e.g. first responders, military, doctors, lawyers)
Brand loyalty
Political parties and movements
Nations
For many people, it is easy to get caught up in these broader collective narratives and feel like you are making a difference. Someone’s association with one or more of these movements may help you understand the narrative they are living out, and how to connect with them or be a positive part of their story.
If someone finds themselves ejected from a collective story, this will greatly shape their narrative, at least for a time.
Playing Your Role
Viewing life as a narrative and realizing that everyone is playing out a story in their mind has excellent explanatory power to people’s behavior and your own. Being able to identify your place in their story allows you to improve, shift, increase, or decrease your role in their story.
While I could spend many more words talking about this topic, this piece already feels long. If you read this far, I hope that this prompts both thought and action in your life to improve both your story and the stories of those around you.
Becoming Our Age focuses on Learning, Laughs, Relationships and Responsibility to help you grow into the person you want to become. If you want me to spend more time on this topic, let us know.
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