Narratives vs. Experience

I was on a 4 day silent meditation retreat recently.

It’s amazing the emotional bonds you can create with people even though you don’t exchange any words with them.

It’s also amazing how quick my mind is to creating narratives around experiences or facts.

I see someone with a tattoo (fact/experience) and I immediately concoct a narrative around that person based on it.

I see someone with a walking cane (fact/experience) and I immediately conjure up explanations of what must be happening in her life.

It was shocking (and a bit depressing to me) to realize just how quick I am to make narratives and judgments about other people when I possess such little real factual or personal experience information.

But it was a good reminder as well.

And the benefit of a silent retreat is that, while you make the narratives come alive, you also have the time and the space to realize that you’re doing so…and then let go of them.

Or, at least try to.

Originally posted on my blog: https://mirror.xyz/0x7201079Be2BDD71CbE9B999373752E731139fe33/uWmn6sNu6eXqTI-GpZjBx3ltY8epwP5iz4gZCDi0ZMI

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