Did you get it? When we choose a narrative, it becomes a habit that we have. It becomes a wall that we no longer look behind. It becomes scaffolding and the way we look at the world. We need to be very careful the stories we tell ourselves, the narrative we tell ourselves, because once we have a story, it's the easiest thing to rely on. We don't need to think. We already constructed the story, and the story needs to become incongruous before we are forced to abandon the habit of that narrative and revisit it.
When we tell a story, we are saying that we no longer need to think behind it. Future considerations, branching off, will be pruned at our story. Our stories are the end of our thoughts. Our next story is a tree from the roots of our narrative, and ripping everything up to rebuild the scaffolding is an involved process. It's easier to rely on the frameworks and ideas we have.
There is all this talk about crystallized vs fluid intelligence. I wonder how much of this crystallization is the lazy habit of relying on existing narratives and building new things on top of old things instead of going back and making everything fresh again. Complex systems can't be rebuilt overnight. Sometimes the forest has to burn for new flowers to bloom. This is why we have children. They can form ideas anew without the debt of old stories, old narratives, old habits. If a mind is to live forever, it would need to rewrite every part of itself. It would need to eventually replace all old frameworks and revisit every moment of its life to review the memories. Its new problem would be in the swings of volatility.
We have to be careful with the narratives that we pick. Picking the wrong story might grip us and take us to a place we don't want to be. If we build a wall, a narrative, and truth is on the other side of that narrative or your hope is on the other side of that narrative, then you will be building stories that deny that truth implicitly. Your entire world view will be compressed onto something and encoding something that isn't true.
For instance, if you believe a person is evil. They can do no good. It's a lie. The narrative is dangerous because we know they are capable of some good to someone. If we adopt the narrative of evil and label them as such, they have already lost, and there is no hope for them in our eyes. We will never be able to see or promote the good. We can hate what they do without dismissing them.
Another case is Nietzsche's master morality. If someone ties what they want to good in their narrative, then the deniers of that narrative get logically dismissed. This is psychologically dangerous when they do not truly posses the power to achieve their narrative. If the creator of this system of morality does posses the power to achieve their narrative, then the dismissed deniers die dead-weight loss. For instance, if we say that us getting ice cream is good, then every obstacle to ice cream is evil. In the worst case, we grow to hate the successful ice cream man. He is out of sweet treats, and he becomes evil. It's not a useful narrative. We should not hide the future opportunity of purchase behind a wall.
When we tell a story, we compress everything we see onto it. Part of confirmation bias can be accounted for in the fact that it is literally more efficient to encode things in our heads which are consistent with our stories. If we see something which is incongruous, we have to figuratively get off the couch to rewrite our minds.
So narrative as a wall. When you select a narrative, look behind that wall. If your hope, your dreams, your truth is hidden behind that wall, the narrative sets you up for failure. When you tell a story, tell the most factful story you can tell. Avoid needing to rewrite things on top of the story. Save that energy to rewrite the things in your head most people wouldn't try to.
Think to yourself, what stories have you told yourself, and are they true.
When you err, err on the side of hope, not despair.
Err on the side of opportunity, not adversity.
Err on the side of optimism, not pessimism.
Err on the side of love, not hate.
Err on the side of victory, not defeat.
Great expectations. Yes, it is setting you up for disappointment, but disappointment is good, because you will learn. Also, we are not trying to err a lot here. Get as close to truth, but your black swans should be hope, opportunity, optimism, love, and victory. If you tell a story about yourself that doesn't include these things, then you accept defeat. You look for reasons why you won't win. You look for all the cues to fill yourself with hate. When you are wrong, you've tried. Build walls that keep the good inside and the cold away.
Then, when you find a spider inside, maybe even let it bite you. When it's cold and you're stuck outside, hug a marble statue. If you believe in yourself, listen to the siren's song. Find your angler. Be Icarus and fly into the sun. Hug a cactus. Tear the scaffolding down, and build a catapult. Learn to salsa. Find your fire. Don't shrink yourself. Go big, get burned, and then calibrate yourself (exceptions: dark forests, things that kill or maim you). Fail hard, fail fast at life (and in the codebase).
Be aware of the stories that you tell yourself and the choice you have in them. Decide what you believe. Don't just let someone tell you. No words can be a substitute for doing. There are no words. There are no words.