Narratives and Circumstances
*last updated on January 9, 2026
We live inside stories. This isn’t new. Humans interpret, connect events, infer motives, and turn scattered experiences into a coherent account of “what’s going on.” In one sense, that is what a story is: a form of meaning-making. Stories help us navigate the world. They also help us navigate ourselves.
The problem is not that we tell stories. The problem is how easily stories can become reality in our minds. A story feels complete. It has a shape. It has a point. It often has an implied moral. And once a story “clicks,” it becomes difficult to notice what it leaves out—or to notice that it is, in fact, a construction.
This is where media literacy matters, but not only because of “the media.” The deeper issue is older and more basic: people (and communities) often produce narratives about the world and about each other. We absorb these narratives, repeat them, and sometimes mistake their coherence for truth. We become attached not only to the facts we believe, but to the shape of the story that makes those facts feel meaningful.
There is another sense in which I use the word “story,” and this is where I have to be careful. Sometimes, when I say “pay attention to someone’s story,” I don’t mean the neat narrative they might tell about themselves (or that I might tell about them). I mean something less tidy: the circumstances that shaped them.
Circumstances is a large word. It includes visible experiences—family life, education, relationships, trauma, opportunities, losses. It also includes wider circles: community norms, culture, country, language, institutions, historical moment. It includes overlapping identities and roles, and it includes ordinary chance: timing, accidents, the one conversation that changed a trajectory. Much of this is not available to an outside observer. Even to the person living it, much of it may be half-understood, unspoken, or remembered imperfectly.
When we judge people quickly, we often judge actions without circumstances. We see what someone did and fill in the rest with a story that feels plausible. We tell ourselves: “They did this because they’re that kind of person.” That story is efficient, and it can feel satisfying. It can also be wrong.
So I’m working with two ideas at once: First, stories are how humans organize reality—but stories can also trap us. We cling to them, defend them, and confuse them with the world itself.
Second, behind every visible action is a field of circumstances that we do not fully see.
Assuming that there is “some story” behind a person’s behavior is not the same as believing their narrative, and it is not the same as excusing harm. It is a practice of intellectual humility: a reminder that neat explanations can be the easiest, not necessarily the truest.
One way to connect these ideas is to say: our stories are compressed versions of circumstances. Compression is necessary; without it we can’t think, decide, or communicate. But any summary necessarily leaves things out. It smooths out ambiguity. It creates closure where life is still unfinished. And when we forget that we are compressing, we start treating our summary as the full file.
For me, the work is to keep these two meanings of “story” distinct. One kind of story is a cognitive tool: the mind’s way of organizing reality into something coherent enough to live with. In this sense, stories are not a moral failure; they are part of how we stay oriented in daily life. But that is also why they deserve scrutiny. We need to notice how our stories get built, how they simplify, where they add closure too quickly, and how easily we absorb other people’s ready-made narratives—especially the ones that “click” with what we already believe.
The other kind of story—what I sometimes mean when I say “someone has a story”—is closer to circumstances: the layered context of a person’s lived experience. These stories are often not neat, not comfortable, and not designed to persuade. They can be hard to hear and hard to integrate. They don’t resolve cleanly, and they can rarely be fully known from the outside. Recognizing this doesn’t mean excusing harm or abandoning responsibility; it means remembering how thin our information usually is when we reduce a person to a single action and a single interpretation.
This is also a practical ethic. When a story about someone feels obvious—especially a story that reduces them to a single trait—it’s worth pausing. What circumstances might I be ignoring? What alternative story could also fit the visible facts? What would I need to know before I could speak with confidence? That pause doesn’t guarantee correctness. But it reduces the harm that comes from certainty built on thin information.
About this project: Start page
The problem is not that we tell stories. The problem is how easily stories can become reality in our minds. A story feels complete. It has a shape. It has a point. It often has an implied moral. And once a story “clicks,” it becomes difficult to notice what it leaves out—or to notice that it is, in fact, a construction.
This is where media literacy matters, but not only because of “the media.” The deeper issue is older and more basic: people (and communities) often produce narratives about the world and about each other. We absorb these narratives, repeat them, and sometimes mistake their coherence for truth. We become attached not only to the facts we believe, but to the shape of the story that makes those facts feel meaningful.
There is another sense in which I use the word “story,” and this is where I have to be careful. Sometimes, when I say “pay attention to someone’s story,” I don’t mean the neat narrative they might tell about themselves (or that I might tell about them). I mean something less tidy: the circumstances that shaped them.
Circumstances is a large word. It includes visible experiences—family life, education, relationships, trauma, opportunities, losses. It also includes wider circles: community norms, culture, country, language, institutions, historical moment. It includes overlapping identities and roles, and it includes ordinary chance: timing, accidents, the one conversation that changed a trajectory. Much of this is not available to an outside observer. Even to the person living it, much of it may be half-understood, unspoken, or remembered imperfectly.
When we judge people quickly, we often judge actions without circumstances. We see what someone did and fill in the rest with a story that feels plausible. We tell ourselves: “They did this because they’re that kind of person.” That story is efficient, and it can feel satisfying. It can also be wrong.
So I’m working with two ideas at once: First, stories are how humans organize reality—but stories can also trap us. We cling to them, defend them, and confuse them with the world itself.
Second, behind every visible action is a field of circumstances that we do not fully see.
Assuming that there is “some story” behind a person’s behavior is not the same as believing their narrative, and it is not the same as excusing harm. It is a practice of intellectual humility: a reminder that neat explanations can be the easiest, not necessarily the truest.
One way to connect these ideas is to say: our stories are compressed versions of circumstances. Compression is necessary; without it we can’t think, decide, or communicate. But any summary necessarily leaves things out. It smooths out ambiguity. It creates closure where life is still unfinished. And when we forget that we are compressing, we start treating our summary as the full file.
For me, the work is to keep these two meanings of “story” distinct. One kind of story is a cognitive tool: the mind’s way of organizing reality into something coherent enough to live with. In this sense, stories are not a moral failure; they are part of how we stay oriented in daily life. But that is also why they deserve scrutiny. We need to notice how our stories get built, how they simplify, where they add closure too quickly, and how easily we absorb other people’s ready-made narratives—especially the ones that “click” with what we already believe.
The other kind of story—what I sometimes mean when I say “someone has a story”—is closer to circumstances: the layered context of a person’s lived experience. These stories are often not neat, not comfortable, and not designed to persuade. They can be hard to hear and hard to integrate. They don’t resolve cleanly, and they can rarely be fully known from the outside. Recognizing this doesn’t mean excusing harm or abandoning responsibility; it means remembering how thin our information usually is when we reduce a person to a single action and a single interpretation.
This is also a practical ethic. When a story about someone feels obvious—especially a story that reduces them to a single trait—it’s worth pausing. What circumstances might I be ignoring? What alternative story could also fit the visible facts? What would I need to know before I could speak with confidence? That pause doesn’t guarantee correctness. But it reduces the harm that comes from certainty built on thin information.
About this project: Start page
