I. The Cult of the Narrative
There’s a quiet tyranny spreading. And it wears the robe of creativity.
It tells you: “Everything is a story.”
Your breakfast. Your startup. Your dog’s haircut.
Your mild inconvenience at the airport lounge.
All of it—content waiting to be carved into a narrative.
But not everything is a story.
And certainly, not everything needs to be told.
In the last two decades, we’ve gone from understanding the power of storytelling to becoming slaves to the performance of it.
Marketing gurus declared: “People don’t buy products. They buy stories.”
And so we bought the idea.
Founders rehearsed it.
Influencers perfected it.
Life became a pitch deck. A carousel. A reel.
“Your brand needs a story.”
“Your life needs a story.”
“Your marriage needs a story.”
But maybe—just maybe—it doesn’t.
Maybe your product is simply useful.
Maybe your day was just uneventful.
Maybe your thoughts don’t need a hero’s journey—just a little quiet.
Sometimes, silence carries more meaning than an entire script.
II. Narcissism, Ring Lights & Echo Chambers
The problem isn’t stories.
The problem is the belief that you are always the main character.
That everything must be interpreted through the lens of your experience.
That the world is waiting, hungry, for your opinion. Your caption. Your curated take.
So we bend reality to fit the script.
We frame suffering, joy, and grief not through introspection, but through presentation.
We carry ring lights into our living rooms, mining moments for content.
We respond to global tragedies not as citizens—but as protagonists in a never-ending reel.
A flood halfway across the world? “How does this affect my story?”
A political shift? “Here’s how I feel—and how you should too.”
A gruesome relationship crime? “Ugh, be aware guys. Luckily, me and my partner are doing amazing!”
This isn’t storytelling.
This is performance art masquerading as vulnerability.
We’ve confused vulnerability with exposure.
We’ve started trading privacy for dopamine.
Grief becomes content.
A child’s laughter, a funeral’s silence, a lover’s argument—nothing is off limits if it feeds the algorithm.
And it’s seeding something darker:
Echo chambers built on tightly scripted identities.
Narratives so polished, we stop hearing anything that doesn’t fit the arc.
Because stories are sticky.
Once you craft one, you defend it.
Facts bend. Nuance disappears. Curiosity dies.
We’re not telling stories anymore.
We’re performing roles—over and over.
And what happens when everyone’s narrating, but no one’s listening?
We end up in a room full of echoes.
Each voice louder, but none of it landing.
III. What If We Let It Be?
There’s a quiet scene in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Sean Penn’s character finally spots the elusive snow leopard—but doesn’t take the photo.
“Sometimes I don’t. If I like a moment… I mean, me, personally… I don’t like the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”
Then he smiles.
“Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.”
Maybe that’s the whole point.
What if we didn’t narrate everything?
What if we let moments pass—unrecorded, unposted, unpolished?
What if we stopped chasing stories, and started living them—quietly?
Let life be messy. Unframed. Uncaptioned.
Not every seed becomes a tree.
Not every anecdote is a parable.
Not every story is a story.
And maybe… that’s the story worth telling.