I Made This Up

Rewriting the fictions of our past

Sitting at the kitchen counter last weekend, my dad and I told my teenage daughter stories about my childhood growing up on the iron range of Northern Minnesota. He spun a yarn about my babysitter Red, an old Vietnam war vet who always had a stack of Playboys under his smoldering Marlboro Reds.

I recalled my glee when my dad’s best friend Russell, with the three-legged dog aptly named Tripod, took me on a 2-hour tractor ride to pick up dead cows. Oh and my personal favorite: the time I snuck into the Baptist church next door to my trailer park and accidentally got saved because Catholic mass was boring, and I was jealous that all the other trailer park kids played kickball and ate popsicles at church.

I considered these stories as I fell asleep that night and came to an uncomfortable realization: I have no actual recollection of these events. If I’m being brutally honest about my pursuit to “know thyself,” when I close my eyes and try to remember being in these situations, I do not have concrete memories of the events.

What I remember is the story-telling, or perhaps an occasional photograph of the people/places. But if I’m being blunt, these are stories I very well could have made up, or recount with less than historical accuracy.

Any “truth” in my tall tales, is in the person I have become today as a result of the stories I have told myself about my Self. Images of cigarettes, standing in line for WIC food, and rebelling against religion are the “I” in my historical ego unconsciously reflecting the history that formed it. Truly, these people and stories I encounter are parts of, or projections of my “me.” They are mere phantoms, shadows that I cast in roles to serve the forming of my identity.

Commonly, we live in a whiny victim mentality toward our history. We use the events of our past as an excuse to stay the same. To stay stuck. But how much of it, if we’re being honest, do we recall through the function of memory, and how much do we simply recall from the hundreds of times we’ve told the story to our mom, best friend, or therapist?

Our life is a constantly evolving narrative. We can change the genre from drama to comedy anytime we wish with some mindset work. What if instead, we saw through the fictions of our lives a little more honestly so as to live as joyfully as we say we wish to?

Sadly, there are no products on sale for disciplining the mind in the TikTok shop. At least not that I am aware of. There’s definitely a self-help book (or a million), but it still takes a bit of elbow grease. And time. Lots and lots of time.

Truth may be in the eye of the beholder, but it is definitely not found in our feelings because guess what — feelings change. A lot. Our stories determine our consciousness. Our very way of being in the world. At any time, if we so choose, we can awaken to our former sleeping consciousness and pick a new channel.

To be honest, spinning a yarn at the kitchen counter with my kids is even more enjoyable now. When I’m awake and aware that I’m adding a few extra bells and whistles for embellishment, I’m even better at turning a minnow into a whale in my fish stories.

Now I just make sure not to live my whole life sulking in the belly of it.