Giving Up On Plot

Why are we so hooked on stories, anyway?

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Above: This photo brought to you by the military-industrial complex.

While standing in line at MEPS, the intake facility for the US military, I watched a man walk towards us. “How many of you,” he called out in a raised voice, “have never been to a doctor or dentist before?”

Nearly every person in front of me raised their hand. I turned to look behind me and saw the same. Oh, I thought in my wisdom as a naive early twenty-something who grew up with a public healthcare system. I didn’t know that was even possible.

Many months later, I walked through the massive opening in the hull of the aircraft carrier I had just been stationed to. Just inside the opening is the hangar bay, a central space on the ship where the aircraft are kept when not in use on the flight deck. I worked in a shop located near the end of the tunnel, a long hallway that extended fore and aft from the hangar bay to the bow of the ship. It took less than a minute to walk from my shop into the hangar bay, so I’d often hang out there and people watch.

Over time, I noticed that many of the African-American sailors, specifically, tended to have one of a handful of names stitched onto their uniforms: Brown, Green, Jackson, Johnson, or Washington. At first, I was vaguely amused by how predictable this was. It occurred to me later that the phenomenon was almost certainly American history at work, having bestowed the names of a few white enslavers on many.

Still later, for reasons I don’t recall, I searched Wikipedia for the name of the US Senator my aircraft carrier was named after: John C. Stennis. We carried his name, it had been explained to me, because he “got a lot of money for the Navy.” It turned out he’d also been a raging segregationist who voted against every act of legislation that enabled the non-white sailors around me, who made up a disproportionately large percentage of the enlisted ranks, to access their positions in the first place. I was struck by the casual cruelty of a government asking its people to serve in the name of a man who, if he’d had his way, would’ve still had his boot on their necks.¹

Before that point, I don’t think American history had ever felt alive to me. It told a story that I’d read in textbooks or encountered in historical novels but, tucked away in my own class bubble, I couldn’t directly connect with. Little by little, prick by prick, the simplistic story I’d been told about the United States began to deflate.

I think we’re too attached to stories anyway.

Lately, I find myself growing increasingly annoyed while stumbling across one article after another telling a story about why Americans vote against their own interests, how to understand some perplexing viewpoint, or whatever else in this election season. Can’t you see? I retort in my head. They just like the story they’re being told. Why do people do or think stupid things? Because they’re susceptible to propaganda.

We like stories. We like to tell stories about who we are, whether as a people or as individuals. We tie the threads of our history into a bow, a success story of freedom and wealth. We wrap the loose ends of our lives into a neat, linear narrative that says “here’s how I chose my profession,” or “here’s how I met the love of my life,” or “here’s why I got divorced,” or “…and so then I launched a new career.” We attribute causes to effects. We turn the people around us into characters, into archetypes within our supporting cast. We expect the plot to pace itself nicely, hitting the beats of our life story – introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement.

I think I’m over listening to stories.²

Last week, I wrote about my father’s death. I used to avoid sharing details about my family with anyone, but I’ve been trying to be more open in general. The funny thing is people keep saying things like, “Wow, it must’ve been hard to grow up with an addict,” or “addicts just don’t change, do they?“ But I didn’t grow up with an addict, I remind them. My parents were entirely sober when they raised me, for all of my childhood. And even though he lived in a building that smelled of crack for the final decade of his life, I still don’t see my father as an addict.³

For whatever reason, this complexity seems harder for people to absorb. Maybe we’re ultimately afraid of the idea that someone can be one person for a large chunk of their lives, then another for the remainder of it. Maybe we don’t like that uncertainty, that lack of continuity. Maybe it makes us nervous (who else in our lives might change so thoroughly?). So we reject it and look for order that makes us more comfortable instead.

If I were telling a story about my life, I would struggle to characterize my parents. I remember my mother reading stories to me every night before bed. I remember home-cooked meals. I remember lessons in piano and ice skating and art and judo and swimming and ballet and gymnastics and many more activities. I remember summers spent in cottages and camping. More often than not, my father wore a suit. I remember him praying and reading the Bible and sitting in his armchair after work, hiding behind an enormous newspaper that covered his entire upper body. I remember snowboarding trips and a timeshare at a world class ski resort and a mother who was nearly always present, nearly always available.

Of course, those are older memories. I also remember my parents’ world narrowing and becoming smaller, less rich, more watered down. As one of my siblings grew increasingly mentally ill, their attention swung there and little elsewhere. Needs were high and resources were few and, probably to blow off some of the stress of owning a house they couldn’t afford and a child actively losing a grip on reality, they started looking for outlets. “Your father stole your life savings,” my boyfriend reminds me – a detail that landed harder with him than it ever did with me, for whom it was just a drop in a bucket.

So were they good or bad parents?

I think they were just people. They were both self-sacrificing and self-absorbed. They were interesting and well-rounded individuals before they became much less interesting and flat. They gave before they took. They showed up before they didn’t. They had money before it was gone. They put their children first before they chose themselves instead. They were one way before they were another.

To me, the notion that someone can change so profoundly isn’t inherently scary. I think it’s hopeful. We can change so thoroughly that the people closest to us no longer recognize who we are. And then we can change again. And again. We’re never trapped in a role in the plot of any single story.⁴ There are no archetypes here.

Right now, my son is in Paris attending the opening ceremony of the Olympics. His father planned the trip almost a year ago and when he did, I remembered how it had always been his dream – ever since we watched the incredible opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing on television only to move there several months later – to attend. My ex-husband told me that after Covid, he decided he was going to prioritize having fun. So, these are the kinds of things he does (when you don’t own a house and you’re willing to sublet, travel isn’t prohibitively expensive).⁵

Scrolling through photos of my son in front of the Arc de Triomph or claiming his seat in the stands built perpendicular to the Seine for the parade of athletes, I feel my excitement begin to rise. This is what I wanted for him. I wanted him to feel free – to know that he is never trapped in any situation, that there’s always a pathway out whether through the mind or physically. I wanted him to understand that you don’t need to make a certain amount of money to be able to explore. Exploration is always within our reach, even when our resources are constrained. The world belongs to him as much as it belongs to anyone else; he isn’t consigned to watching the Olympics on television anymore than he is to a particular socioeconomic class or fate.

As my excitement rises, I sense myself abandoning this urge to fit my life into a narrative that tells me I should be working in a certain capacity or securing that future for myself. I’ve been seeing my life as unfolding between two beats of a plot: after one phase of my career and before the next. But what if I just embrace the freedom I have at present? What if I just owned it and oriented myself around something else entirely – not career but hey, maybe fun, whatever that looks like to me? What if I stop seeing this stage of life as in-between and throw myself into living right now? What if I stop seeking a change in perspective and just enact one?

What if I give up on plot entirely and free myself from all the expectations it imposes?

I think, in this election year, that we will be inundated with stories. There will be stories about who is voting for what and why. There will be stories about who Americans are, as a people, and why. There will be a rhetoric-fuelled inflation of an identity-based sense of self – one you can either accept or reject, as preferred.

I think, in this election year, I’m going to shun stories about history and voters and issues and the future. I’m going to submit my overseas ballot when it’s time and be done with it.

I think, in this year of my father’s death, I’m going to do away with simplistic stories about who he was and why. I’m going to resist shoving him into a villain/failure archetype or a narrative that neatly explains the ups and downs of the trajectory of his life.

I think, in this year of personal instability and insecurity, I’m going to embrace what I have. I’m going to explore as much as I can and bring my son along as often as possible. I’m going to stop wondering about my relationship and simply live it out, whatever direction it goes. I’m over waiting for the next stage to materialize within in some plot for my life story.

I think we hear and tell so many stories, we forget that we can write them, too. Change is always possible and a new perspective has little value if we don’t act on it. I think we should focus more on leaping, on tasting the flavour of life, and less on trying to explain the things that happen in life.

Maybe the stories we hear or tell are a trap. Maybe all we need to do to liberate ourselves is start writing our own stories about whatever we want. Writing, being, owning, living – whatever the case, freedom lies in getting started and not looking back.

For more on unpacking stories, see:

The Stories We Tell About Ourselves

Mushrooms Stole My Bitter

"You Had the Power All Along, My Dear"

1. Stennis died in 1995, less than a decade before I enlisted, after a 40-year career in Congress. Senator Strom Thurmond, another virulent and unapologetic segregationist, held office for half a century until he retired at age 100 in 2003. You might think being on the wrong side of history would end or at least tarnish your career in public office but clearly, it did not (Thurmond was so old, blind, and deaf at the end – a fitting reflection of his willingness to govern for all Americans – that he had to be carried into Senate committee meetings. He remains the most beloved senator in South Carolinian history).

2. Yet here I am, telling them anyway. Such is the human condition!

3. A user? Unequivocally. An addict? I think he could’ve stopped whenever he found a good enough reason to.

4. This goes for nations, too.

5. Sublet wisely, and you can actually make money when you travel.