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I'm an individual, mom!

By Anonymous


As always, I started this week’s blog writing session by spending an unnecessary amount of time pondering what this prompt might be asking me. I’ve decided that iI have two possible routes to go down here. The first option would be telling you of a specific time where I’ve misunderstood, or simply had a different interpretation, of a narrative than someone else. If I were to take that option, I would probably tell you about the times when my story and bruises on my body didn’t match with the information my ex was currently giving to the police. Or maybe I could tell you about a time that I had a petty squabble with a friend that could have been avoided if we were interpreting the narrative in a similar way. I don’t like this option, though. It seems too restricting and doesn’t answer the question the way I want to.

I think that keeping this question broad and responding to it in a similar fashion will help me to reach the most satisfying answer. What I’m getting at here is: Isn’t my interpretation of a narrative always different than the next person’s? The way that I move through and experience the world has always, and always will be, different than the person standing next to me. For example, when we look at some of the larger narratives at play that we’re familiar with, such as politics, it’s easy to see this at play. I may hear a story about Donald Trump closing the government to fund a very expensive, very useless wall and my initial interpretation of this narrative is that it makes no sense. I can’t find the logic in cutting off valuable government resources and restricting millions of people from the things they need access to on a daily basis in order to fund this wall. Now, while this is what I believe, the next person may be able to find this narrative and the logic it uses sensible and agreeable. This same logic could be applied to a lot of different narratives or even life itself in general. As individuals, we each form our own opinions and see the way that the world works a little differently than one another. Even if we think that we share a common outlook on a situation as our friend or neighbor, when it comes down to it, it is impossible for us to share the exact same idea in the exact same way. Our experiences in life will always impact the way that we view a particular narrative, which means that my interpretation has never matched up with someone else’s. 

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