Splash No. 13

Storytelling

In Kyle’s song “Remember Me,” there’s the line “The past is just a story we tell ourselves,” which is an extremely interesting concept. Emily Esfahani Smith researched meaningful lives and discovered that one of the pillars of a meaningful life is storytelling. Said differently, she argues that many people with the most meaningful lives are those who tell their own life stories in a way that creates meaning for them. The past is a story we tell ourselves, but that story can define how we view the world and our specific experience. We can frame the adversities we see as simple roadblocks on the hero’s journey or the various obstacles that wear the tragic hero down and lead to his destruction.

I began thinking about the concept of our lives as stories when my friend Chris told me about the unreliable narrators in The Shining. The unreliable narrator is a common literary trope, and one of my favorites, since it makes it difficult for the reader to really understand what is true and what isn’t. It can be found in books like Fight Club and The Things They Carried. Personally, the reason that I love this trope so much is how realistic and common it is in daily life. 

Each day we hear plenty of stories from other people or think about our own stories from the past. We often take these stories at face value as fact, when in reality, our memory is extremely unreliable and other people are filled with different biases that make them more likely to tell stories in a way that makes them look good. In fact, every time we access a memory, it’s rewritten based on the context that we remember it. Your memories today are different from your memories tomorrow. Everyone we know is an unreliable narrator, and finding the truth is a difficult thing in real life as well. 

Despite how negative this sounds, the changeable nature of our memory is also a superpower. We have the ability to reframe our experience in ways that will create a story that can provide meaning to our lives. The failed test, the job you lost, the cat that ran away are all learning moments that help you to accomplish the fundamental goals you can define retroactively. In retrospect, I can say that my childhood inability to stick with activities actually revealed a proclivity for testing and iteration that I think will make me a great designer. I can say that the time I didn’t spend socializing in high school allowed me to enter college with a clean slate where I could more objectively and systematically learn about other people.

We may be unreliable, but we can narrate our stories in the best possible way to find meaning.

Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week

Longread about Tech + Time

“Is the Internet Changing Time?” by Laurence Scott - one of my greatest interests is learning about the way that technology affects the way humans live and interact with each other. This article dives deep into how time is starting to change with the growth of the data-centric online world.

New Brand
Dropbox Design - Dropbox recently released a new design system for their company. I personally am a huge fan of the new colors since I’ve been getting tired of minimalism and all white websites.

Playlist
My Time Capsule - Spotify generates “time capsule” playlists filled with music you used to listen to a lot. This is mine!

Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below). 

Love,
Nikhil