Let’s be honest about the stories we tell and the stories we hear.

Introduction

I remember that day like it was 8 years ago.

My spouse and I had finished our post-wedding vacation and we were about to find out how well we would deal with chaos together as our return flight arrived a couple of hours late to the Miami airport.

Slight accompanying complication — it was an international exchange…and we were hungry.

By the time passports were checked and customs were crossed, we found that our flight home had already boarded. Being new to the Miami airport, we were rushed to a further state of panic when we discovered that our flight was boarded on the complete other side of the airport.

Which was also under construction.

Needless to say, our hunger pangs subsided in favor of adrenaline.

Is it acceptable to run through an airport? I don’t know. But even with the strange looks we received as newlyweds scampering through terminals, we elected to mindlessly sprint.

We heard a last call come over the speakers as we entered the sphere of our necessary location only to look and see that our gate was at the furthest end of the giant room.

Have you ever walked on the tarmac of an airport?

I have not. I have run across one with luggage in hand as the portable stairs were pushed into place just in time for us to climb into an airplane.

As we approached the desk, the very kind flight attendant calmly told us that we were too late. I then gave a hurried explanation of our predicament, including that we were newly married college students and didn’t know what we would do if we didn’t get on that plane.

The flight attendant then went into a rush of typing (her words per minute had to be like 200). She picked up the phone, said some commands, and looked at us with a ‘Mission Impossible’ tone while saying, “Follow me.”

Instead of walking through the normal tunnel, we took a door to an outdoor labyrinth of stairs, onto the tarmac, and into the entrance of the plane that had almost left.

Airplane roasted almonds never tasted so good.

Part One — The Art of Memory

But, as I said, it is a story I remember.

Which means the adventure of boarding that plane in Miami isn’t the actual event itself — because whatever details I preserve almost certainly are not the exact and complete replica of what happened.

Because the stories we tell and the stories we hear are not artifacts of history.

They are a product of memory.

And memory is not in search of a factual description of the totality of some moment or event — memory is a search for meaning.

The psychological science (or, more aptly, the psychological art) of memory is fascinating and I would suggest exploring those intricacies further (Find more here: How We Remember (and Forget) Things
The first step to improving memory is understanding the science behind it)

Yet, the conclusion we might arrive at in regards to our storytelling is this:

Events or moments never happen the way we say they did.

This is not to imply we are all lying or intentionally attempting some sort of mental theft whenever we tell a story. This statement is less of a moral judgment and more of a basic description of how memory works.

Encoding every detail of a memory simply isn’t possible.

And, further, recalling every detail is beyond our mental capacity.

Therefore, when we tell stories, our words can be compared to someone pointing at the moon.

But the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself.

The story of my airport experience eight years ago is not the same thing as my actual experience running through terminals. 

Part Two — Memory, Story, & the Problem of Eyewitnesses

This reality is best illustrated by the messiness of eyewitness testimonies — because eyewitness testimonies are almost always wrong.

In cases where a false conviction occurred, 75% were because the verdict resulted from eyewitnesses. In fact, over 300 wrongful convictions based on eyewitness testimony have been overturned by DNA evidence. 

Why have so many people spent years of their lives incarcerated for acts they did not commit?

Because human beings don’t remember for precise descriptions, they remember for meaning.

Imagine that you are sitting at your office desk when, suddenly, you hear a co-worker shout, “They are getting away!” You turn and look out your window to see someone running with a bag. You get a glimpse of the perpetrator that lasts a fraction of a second before they get behind a corner and are gone.

Later, police bring you in for questioning and ask what the thief looked like. Do you know? What about the color of their shirt? How big were they? Did you catch their eye color? Maybe you are shown a sketch — can you confirm with absolute certainty it is the correct person? If you were shown a lineup, would you be able to point out the right person or, as might be necessary, confirm that none of the suspects is the correct criminal?

There is a psychological experiment done to display how inaccurate this process is. A clip is shown where the subjects are given roughly a one-second glimpse of a person in question. They are then asked to describe the person or pick them out of a lineup. Almost always, the subjects never accurately describe or correctly pick out the person in question. They get the clothing color wrong or can’t remember the person’s size or fail to properly describe any other detail that would be helpful for a conviction.

Now, this is partly because the time it takes to encode sensory information to short-term or, even, long-term memory is difficult and has to be intentional. Under moments of duress, our ability to accomplish this encoding process falters and we’re left with gaps in information.

Then comes the real problem — we feel the need to fill in the gaps.

Thus, creating false memories has become a point of contention in contemporary psychological circles. Popular therapeutic techniques in the 1970’s through 1990’s led to the discovery that many people were claiming memories that never happened. Whether hypnosis or what is called “Imagination Therapy,” in an attempt to recover repressed memories, people began concluding facts that never occurred to them. Often unintentionally, therapists were inviting their patients to consider details that might be true. The result was the construction of details that the patients then owned as real events. They were even able to recount these false memories with vivid, confident details. Such is the power of the human mind.

When memory is so susceptible to encoding failure, we will fill in the gaps as an attempt to make sense of an ambiguous world.

Simply put, memory is easily influenced.

Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist who focuses on memory, has written and spoken about this issue frequently. Her TED talk titled “How Reliable is Your Memory?” offers insights into this problem. One conclusion she has drawn is this:

Research is beginning to give us an understanding of how false memories of complete, emotional and self-participatory experiences are created in adults. First, there are social demands on individuals to remember; for instance, researchers exert some pressure on participants in a study to come up with memories. Second, memory construction by imagining events can be explicitly encouraged when people are having trouble remembering. And, finally, individuals can be encouraged not to think about whether their constructions are real or not. Creation of false memories is most likely to occur when these external factors are present, whether in an experimental setting, in a therapeutic setting or during everyday activities.

What we need to conclude about memory is simple:

Memory is malleable.

And we should consider, then, how we ought to interact with the stories that accompany such a malleable part of our identities.

Part Three — The Fingers Pointing at the Moon: 3 Complications

I once had a professor who asked, “Can communication be unbiased?”

No one was quite sure how to respond so the professor asked a follow-up question, “What about newspapers?” Ah, the media, of course, they are biased, right? Well, then we were thrown a curveball.

“What about this headline?”

We all thought, “Certainly, this is just basic fact; an unimpeded offering of pure information.” But the professor continued, offering us notable insights about the influence of someone’s perspective in communicating information.

Because the photograph used, the font and its size, the specific word choice, and the location of the message on the first page — those are all decisions made that reflect the bias of the communicator.

Does this mean the message is bad or coercive?

No.

It only reveals that a person’s perspective is entangled in the disclosing of information.

Complication #1 — Perspective

You have a perspective. When you recall information and pass it on, the communication comes from your perspective.

And your perspective is limited — it contains only a fraction of the complete reality. Whatever information you have access to and decide to generate for the narrative, no matter how pure the intention, is going to be partial. You aren’t able to recite every bit of detail surrounding the events or moments because you didn’t encode them all.

Whatever you communicate will, therefore, reflect your bias.

Which is completely acceptable.

But it is incomplete — your perspective’s memory is not the fullness of the thing itself.

The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

But that’s only the first issue.

Complication #2 — Selection

Consider how you would describe your childhood home. 

You may elaborate on the color and location and the sentimental feelings that have become dear to you. 

But you might not include exactly how many trees there were or where each window was on the house.

Because not only is your memory limited, it is selective.

Back to encoding, as information moves from sensory to short-term to long-term, the details become fewer. Essentially, we don’t remember everything. Nor should we. Our stories would be laboriously long and boring. But if this is true about your childhood home, then it is also true about the history book you read or the account of why your friends got divorced and every story between.

In our age of the scientific method, we may want all the details, but we will not get them.

Complication #3 — Interpretation

Not only will we fail to get all the details, but we will also fail to get the exact details. Though a common trope, this is exactly what happens when the fisherman exaggerates the size of their catch.

Because you may tell me about that room in the center of your house; the one where your family lovingly sat and shared its finest moments. But the way you describe the lighting or the size of the room may have undergone a game of telephone.

What’s in your head probably won’t match what is in reality.

Because as the memory ages, it takes on new form.

Did we really run through the entire airport? Was the terminal exactly on the furthest side of the airport? Did the flight attendant literally type 200 words per minute?

Probably not.

Like a painting that takes on age, our memories are not static. They continue to construct and morph. They get exaggerated and distorted and inflated as new influences and new information begins to interact with the details.

Your ability to recall information will degrade and evolve over time as you continuously reinterpret that information.

Because, when you recall a memory, you aren’t recounting the event itself, you’re enfleshing your interpretation on the event through the medium of a story.

Which is okay because stories are not a scientific report. The stories we tell and the stories we hear are not meant to capture the wholistic details in the form of pure, unbiased facts.

They are meant to capture the meaning.

The mind is at play when it comes to memory. The intention is not to take us to the moon, but to point to it, to show it from your eyes, and, therefore, to offer an angle that only you can give.

The supple nature of your memory, in congruence with your limited perspective and selective encoding, makes for a very different story than the exact details of what happened. The memory you are describing will always be different than reality itself.

An exact replica does not exist.

But your interpretation does.

And that’s where the value of story truly lies.

Part Four — So What Do We Do With Our Stories?

If your memory is not a recording device, then what do we do with the limited, selective, and interpreted stories we tell? 

What should we do with the malleable memory?

If how we remember information is fragile and plastic in nature, susceptible to influence, and constantly being constructed — are the stories we tell and hear worth anything?

Yes.

Because while the facts may not be true in a historical sense, no matter how confident and detailed you make them, there is no doubt that the story you are telling is, indeed, true.

Because the truth of a story doesn’t need to be found in the details.

The truth of a story is found in what you’ve done with the details.

Alas, memory is about meaning.

And the more fingers we have honestly pointing to the moon, the better we are going to understand the moon and its meaning.

Denouement — “Let Stories Be Stories”

If there is no such thing as a pure, complete, unbiased past — then there is only how you remember the past. 

We could hear all of this and say, “Well, I guess stories have no credibility.” We could let the skepticism of our human problem leave us dismayed. And if we are only after the pure, unadulterated facts of absolute history, then we will, in fact, be suspicious of our memory’s relativity. 

We will scorn all stories as myth. 

But the power of a story is not just that they can be inspiring. 

The power of a story is that it can reveal mystery better than the facts. 

A story told from someone’s limited, selective interpretation of an event won’t help you master the subject at hand, but it will help you see the map of the world more fully. And when you see the world more fully, you are likely to see the storyteller more fully. 

Stories connect us.

Because stories open us up to see.

Let history pursue facts, but recognize the ulterior goal of stories, for they are about the symbol behind the facts. When we tell stories, we must be honest that we aren’t able to capture exactly what happened.

But we are able to capture what it means.

The how and the what of the moment or the event are not as important as why you remember it the way you do.

As Emily Dickinson expresses, in attempting to tell the truth, you will tell it slant.

But that’s where the meaning lies.

When you paint a picture of a scene of your life, the words of your limited perspective won’t give us all the details, your selective encoding won’t capture every piece accurately, and your painting may end up looking like a completely different scene.

But it will reflect how you remember that scene.

What you remember is not as important as how you’ve experienced the memory over time — that’s what we need to pay attention to when we tell and hear stories.

We can be so caught up in the facts that we miss the message. 

And we won’t see as well.

But if we start with an honesty that the facts will never be completely true, we just might hear the truth of the story filling our ears. 

I hope you learned nothing about air travel or the Miami airport or the role of flight attendants from my story. Instead, I hope you learned a bit about me and how I have traversed the world I see. 

And I hope you see a bit more of the map of human experience to help you traverse that same world.

Because that is the point of stories — not to tell the unbiased, absolute, static truth; but to tell the transcendent truth. 

I’m not requesting that you abstain from fact-finding in favor of stories — I’m asking you to consider that the untouched facts we desire aren’t actually real. When it comes down to it, all we have is stories via memory.

Let’s transcend our preoccupation with facts and, instead of arguing about the details that will always be wrong depending on how you look at it, let us go a layer deeper to what the person is actually trying to show us with their malleable memory.

Let’s worry less about accuracy and worry more about connecting to the depths of what the person is pointing at.

And not only will we understand each other better, we will understand the world better — because we will be seeing more than just the facts of the moon, but how the vast multitude of voices have understood the moon over time.

When it comes to the malleable memory game, meaning will be found if we let stories be stories.

If you want pure history, you won’t find it with the malleable memories of human beings. 

You will just find a world of stories waiting to help us see.