You can change your story, but you first must throw away the old ones

By David McElroy · March 13, 2018

Starting when I was a freshman in college, I worked as a part-time newspaper reporter. As the youngest and most inexperienced person in my newsroom, I was given the assignments nobody else wanted. The job taught me how little I knew about people.

I frequently went to a home or office out in the middle of a rural nowhere — on a dirt road 30 or 40 miles from the office — and I couldn’t imagine the people there could have anything interesting to say. It was a prideful attitude from a young man who thought too much of himself.

I soon discovered that even the most mundane person has a story — some meaningful narrative about what he’s seen or felt or lived through. Many times, though, their stories seemed so routine to them that they didn’t recognize the drama or inspiration that they had to share.

I often left interviews with “boring” people — folks who I’d met with a feeling of disdain — with a sense of humility and a realization that I was the one who didn’t yet have much wisdom to share.

On the way home from work this evening, I listened to an episode of the podcast Invisibilia which deals with people who experience great loss and have a choice about whether to cling to their old narratives or change their stories entirely — when they find the old story has come to a dead end.

There was a story about an older woman, for instance, dealing with the death of her husband. After he died, her life fell apart. Everything about her old story involved him. Nothing about the narrative of her life made sense without him in it. Would she cling to a life narrative that left her in unhappiness and depression? Or would she write a new narrative that allowed her to move on?

As I listened to the stories of people dealing with their losses, it hit me out of the blue that I shared something in common with these folks. The story I’ve told myself about my life has gone off track and it no longer even makes sense. As a result, I’m suffering depression from the loss of an unrealized life that meant so much to me — a narrative that’s no longer my future.

In a flash, I realized that I don’t have just one story. Over the course of my life, I’ve had at least half a dozen different narratives — and every time something has fallen apart, I’ve gone through a fallow period that felt like death — and then I’ve emerged with a new narrative that let me move on.

I now have no choice but to write a new narrative.

When I was a teen-ager, I was going to save the world. I was going to get into politics at a young age and become a great political leader. A country that was divided and torn was going to turn to me — as president of the United States — to save us all. This wasn’t just an idle fantasy. It was my very strong narrative. I believed it wholeheartedly. I was determined to make it come true — and I had the personal tools and skills and drive that could have made it come true.

Over time, I lost faith in politics and I lost faith in the “hero narrative” that I was driven to fulfill. It’s more complicated than this — and the changes happened in stages — but I eventually discarded that narrative entirely. I now have absolutely no interest in a corrupt and immoral political system — and I no longer believe I need to save the world. (Now I just want to save my own corner of the world.)

I’ve had other narratives along the way. When I was a young newspaper journalist, I was going to own a large and profitable chain of newspapers. I spent many hundreds of hours working out the tiny details of a plan for a new type of newspaper that would have been stunningly innovative for the time. But then the newspaper industry started dying — and reality forced me to give up that narrative.

After I got out of politics nearly 10 years ago for the last time, I stumbled around in the metaphorical dark looking for a new way forward. I wasn’t going to be president. I wasn’t going to be a media mogul. I wasn’t going to save the world. What was I going to be? It was a dark period for me.

About four years ago, I fell in love — and that love came with a brand new narrative. I saw all the details in my mind. It was so clear and complete. I had a brand new narrative about what my life was going to be. And then the story went off the rails. Like a mourning husband whose wife has died, I hung onto that story, though. For all this time, I’ve treaded water — cut off from the story that meant so much to me, but unable to give it up.

It’s time for me to write a new story for myself, but in order to do that, I have to give up on things which have died — things I couldn’t control.

There’s no brilliant insight in deciding that one must move on in life after a crushing loss, but until the mind is ready for it, there’s no sense in someone saying, “You need to move on.” But something in me is ready — at least for the most part — to start fresh. Even if that means giving up on the fantasy of being loved and needed by someone who meant the world to me.

I don’t know exactly what my new narrative needs to be. I don’t know what my new identity is. I know that bits and pieces of past narratives will be woven into the new story, but it will be an entirely different narrative, at least when taken as a whole.

I have stories to tell about what I’ve experienced and what I’ve felt and what I’ve lived through — in a way that I never imagined when I was an 18-year-old who knew everything. I have more than one story. I have a dozen stories. But if I want a meaningful life right now, I need a new story — new goals, new loves, new (or at least amended) desires.

It’s painful to give up a life I desperately wanted and needed — especially with nothing yet to take its place — but I’m coming to see that I have to give up on something I can’t control. I have to find a new narrative about where I’m going and what I’m going to do — and, hopefully, who will be coming along for the adventure with me.

It’s time for a narrative that will let me start over. One more time.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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