Two children grow up in the same house. They both watch their parents go bankrupt, and they both see the family home taken away.
The first one decides they’re going to be safe for the rest of their life. No risks like the ones that cost the family its house. They’ll never put their own children through that.
The second one comes to a different conclusion. “I saw my parents start again. That means I can start again.” They’ve seen what comes from taking risks, so they’re going to take some too, even if they don’t always succeed.
Same experience. Very different outcome, and a very different life.
The Stoic teacher Epictetus made this point in the second century, and it’s still one of the most useful ideas I know. Section 5 of his Enchiridion opens like this, in George Long’s translation:
Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things; for example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were it would have seemed so to Socrates; for the opinion about death that it is terrible, is the terrible thing.
Epictetus, The Encheiridion, section 5, translated by George Long
What happened to you is one thing. The meaning you gave it is another, and the meaning is the part that keeps on shaping your life.
Two people, one memory
Have you ever talked about something from years ago with someone who was there, and found out you remember it in completely different ways?
You both remember the event itself: where you were, who was there, what got said. The difference is the meaning each of you gave it. That meaning has been quietly deciding how you feel about it ever since.
So what meanings are you giving to your moments, and are they really your own?
Some of them you’ll have shaped yourself, around who you are and the person you want to become. Others you’ll have picked up from somebody else and carried around for so long that they feel like yours. There’s no right or wrong here. It takes a bit of self-awareness, reflection and emotional intelligence. That’s how you separate the moment from the meaning, and see which beliefs you actually chose.
Very often the opinion doing the damage is our own. Nigel Risner and I talked about that on the podcast in an episode on negative self-talk, and the question I asked then still stands. Who is anybody to say what can or can’t be done, other than to themselves?
Ask for more than one witness statement
There’s a reason the police never stop at one witness statement. They ask for as many as they can get, then look for the parts that piece together and make sense across all those different perspectives.
You can do the same with a story that’s bothering you. Ask someone else who was there how they saw it. Or stand in their shoes for a moment, put on a different pair of glasses and look at it through their lens. What happened stays the same. The meaning you take away might not.
Which part of your life could do with a second witness statement?
