I lost one of my favorite winter hats yesterday. The one I kept in the pocket of my main coat because it was warm and functional enough for everyday Upstate New York winter use, cute and fun enough to satisfy the outdoorsy rebel in me, yet smart and professional enough to wear to work (unlike one of my other favorite winter hats, which has knit Viking horns and braids). And the loss of this hat led me to some important insights about life, and particularly the power of story.
The Story Unfolds
It happened at a Utica Comets hockey game, which I unexpectedly attended with my husband. A friend with season tickets had offered us two free seats, and the original plan was for my husband and stepson to go; but at the last minute, my stepson told me he wasn’t feeling up to it and wanted to stay home and sleep (you know when normally alert and active kids go slack? I thought he was going to fall asleep on his feet while talking to me). I had just walked in the door from work, planning to get some projects done during my alone time at the house, and was surprised that my two favorite boyz (as I call them) were still at the house, since they were supposed to have left by then to meet up with our friend. My husband walked into the kitchen saying “We’re just leaving!” and I brought him up to speed on the situation. “Why didn’t you tell me?” my husband asked our son. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings by not going,” was the reply.
We quickly decided that my husband and I would go to the game. Grandma was recruited to babysit, I cut up an apple to eat if I got hungry, and we left. I put the apple slices in my pocket and shoved my hat in on top of them, thinking to myself “That’s not very secure; what if it falls out?” – but then ignored the thought and climbed into the car.
We got to the game, met our friend and pushed through the turnstiles at the last second, found our seats, took off our coats, sat and watched, stood and cheered, went for drinks during intermission, and after a very fun evening left for home. We left a few minutes early to beat the traffic. Our team won, scoring a great goal in the final 30 seconds, and we cut out right after that. Lots of other people had the same idea, so we wove through the crowds and left through a different door than the one we’d come in – at the far end of the auditorium, but closer to our car.
It wasn’t until we were seated in the car and weaving our way through outbound traffic that I reached for my apple slices and realized my hat wasn’t in my pocket anymore. “I lost my hat!”
“Which one?” asked my husband. I told him, and he said, “I saw it as we were leaving, sitting on top of a garbage can!”
“You saw my hat and didn’t say anything?”
“I didn’t realize it was yours. It was so far away from where we’d come in.”
What’s in a Story?
Why am I telling you this story? Because it’s such a perfect and innocuous example of where we can choose to go with the events and experiences that happen in our lives.
I lost a hat. A whole series of actions and decisions led up to that situation: I had thought to myself that the hat was precariously positioned in my pocket and ignored the thought. After the game, I was in a hurry to beat traffic and didn’t check my pocket before we left the auditorium. My husband saw a hat that looked like mine and didn’t say anything (“Hey, that looks like your hat!”). I wasn’t observant enough to notice it myself as we walked past. I chose not to dive back into the post-game traffic to back-track and look for it (abandonment!). Some honest random stranger had been thoughtful enough to pick it up and put it on a garbage can, but any other random stranger could then have plucked it up to take home for themselves. We called the auditorium, but no one answered at any of the numbers. Who knows if it’s even still there?
There are a lot of “facts” and possibilities swirling around in this scenario, several stories and possible outcomes and explanations, several ways to feel about what occurred.
What We Do with Our Story
If we assume that I’m triggered and impacted in some way – large or small – by the loss of this hat, then we have some energy that’s looking for a place to go, energy that perhaps requires some sort of expression. This is where the stories we tell ourselves come in.
I have creative choices to make about what to do with my thoughts, emotions, and energy. For example:
- I can get down on myself for not having listened to myself in the first place or for being so unobservant as to not have noticed my hat sitting on top of a garbage can we walked right past.
- I can blame my husband for having seen my hat, but not saying anything – I can even try to soothe my own guilt and irritation by trying to make him feel bad about it, thus transferring some of that energy.
- I can rationalize it by saying to myself, “Well, it’s just a hat, and I have lots of other hats I can wear.”
- I can think that hopefully it found its way into the hands of someone who needed it more than I do and that it’s making them very happy (it’s a cute hat).
- I can think that this is an opportunity for someone to have done an honest, kind deed and turned it into lost and found, making both themself and me feel good when I’m reunited with it.
- I can decide that everything works out for the best, regardless of the outcome, which then becomes irrelevant.
Which story will I choose?
The Power of Story
I am writing this essay before I’ve even called the auditorium to see if the hat has been turned in by a random stranger or found by the cleaning crew. Why? Because the power of this story is in the not knowing.
When any of us is in a situation where we don’t know the ultimate answer or outcome – for example, the experience of being alive – we can make up any story we want to explain what’s happening to and around us. Every step of the way, we can consciously choose a story that makes us feel good and resonates with our core values, or we can choose a story that makes us (or others) feel bad.
Take that a step further, and even when we do know what (apparently) happened, we still don’t know the entire story – particularly the details of other people’s motivations and intentions – and we regularly choose our interpretation (our story) by filling in “facts” we don’t (or can’t) know. Those interpretations impact how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about others, and how we feel and think about the world around us.
Which story will you choose?
