We are all storytellers.
We form a narrative in our minds of what had happened, in order to structure, justify, and make sense of what we’ve experienced, particularly those big moments, good or bad. How we first met, why they left me, why I got the award, why I got passed over. Why I became sick.
But the narrative isn’t accurate, and sometimes, if not many times, a lie. Stories are a prism that may make what happened very real in our minds, but not actually true in the sense of accuracy.
Hence the Rashomon (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876) effect in which multiple people having been present at the same time an event occurred, could tell completely different accounts in hindsight about what actually happened, which explains the unreliability of eyewitness accounts because our minds are still trying to filter what had happened through the lens of a narrative. We don’t just experience something, but we need that filter of trying to make sense of that experience, especially after the fact when it’s no longer in the present moment, but in our long-term memories.
But the accurate truth is rarely a story that can be tied up in a bow. The truth doesn’t always make sense, but we try to do so anyhow because we can’t psychologically live with the notion of sheer randomness and chance. We force everything into an action-reaction, decision-consequence axis. A tragedy strikes, and “it’s meant to be” or invoking the impenetrable logic of some religious deity. Or we try to justify certain actions we took, or that happened to us.
We need things that happen to us to make sense. Even if the truth is, it rarely does.
Which calls into question the line between fiction and non-fiction.