Bing & Ruth, "Broad Channel"

You have three stories about yourself.

The story you tell to others is your ideal version of who you are, edited and curated to create an impression of the person you wish you would be. Sometimes you even act like the star in this story, but the fact that you need to keep telling it means that most days it remains an aspiration at best.

The story you tell to yourself is the one that acknowledges some of the flaws you’re glossing over in the other story but comes up with reasons to justify or explain away most of those faults. This is the story that helps you survive, the one that allows you to make as much peace as you can with the ways you fall short that you can’t quite ignore.

The story that tells itself to you is the one that you listen to the least, because the only time the tale is told in full is in the middle of the night when you’re half-awake and too tired to turn it away. This story shows you who you are for real, and makes a mockery of the story you tell yourself and the story you tell everyone else. The story that tells itself to you about who you are is the hardest one to hear because it’s too true. You’d do anything to change the details but it is so tough to admit that you’re the one who is writing it that you can only see it as something that is already written. You can only see it as a story that tells itself to you.

What does your truest story about yourself look like? Mine mirrors the video above almost exactly. Enjoy.