I’m a story teller. It isn’t just what I do; it’s an intrinsic part of who I am. That said, it is a matter of degree. I’m more infected by the need to make stories of all I see, think, and experience than most, but to a degree, all human beings are storytellers. It’s part of our nature to seek patterns, to join things together in our minds in order to make sense of them, and what is that but a story?

We don’t experience life; we experience our story about our life, and in that story we are always the central protagonist. We may be the victim, the triumphant champion, the martyr, the beloved—we probably change roles depending on who we’re with, in fact. But we are the heroine of our own story.

It probably can’t be avoided, given we can never know all the facts. Our senses—even the instruments we make to extend our senses—can’t detect beyond certain wavelengths of light and sound. We know of animals with senses we cannot even name, and have to describe in terms of those we have: feeling sound or smelling light. Even with our limited range, we can’t handle the constant sensory bombardment, and have to learn to filter out what our brain classifies as unimportant, in order to comprehend what is left.

That’s why police interview more than one eye witness to a crime; why historians seek more than one contemporary account of an incident; why three people can each take a completely different message from a conversation, and all swear that their own is the only true report.

What we can do is avoid embellishing. I can only report the facts as I experienced them, but I don’t have to add to them (at least in real life—in story space, adding to them is my job).

What we can do is be gentle with one another. I tend to be cautious about telling someone else they are wrong, or suggesting that they lie. All I can say for certain is, ‘that is not how I experienced it.’

What we can do is remember that every other person on the planet has just as much right as us to regard themselves as the centre of their story, and those around them as the supporting cast, the characters dignified with personal names and backstories. I am the heroine of my own life, with my own personal romantic hero, friends, relatives, and neighbours. But to other people, I’m just part of the faceless crowd.

After all, that’s their story.