The story we write is the story we live

When I was a journalist, I covered the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southeast Asia, and one story in particular has stuck with me. I was researching the daunting spread of the virus and the dire state of detection and care. There was tremendous fear and misunderstanding of the disease at the time. When someone tested positive for HIV at a medical clinic, the family was sometimes informed instead of the patient. Fearful family members might shun the relative. Hospitals and clinics were forced to turn away people with HIV or AIDS, having no treatment to offer. The sick too often found themselves without a home or hope.

A Cambodian friend told me about a monk at a temple in Phnom Penh - Wat Svay Dang Kum - who claimed to have the cure. He was said to sell old Sprite bottles of bark tea that would wipe out the disease. That sounded like a story: a crafty religious leader preying on the vulnerable with a pricey elixir of false medicine.

But when I located Pal Hon, a thoughtful, pipe-smoking Buddhist monk in saffron robes, I realized there was a lot more to the story. Sitting on a straw mat under the banana trees outside the pagoda, he spent hours with people from all over the country who had been turned away by everyone else in their lives. He offered them acceptance, comfort and a green plastic bottle filled with hope. He seemed to believe his medicine was working. I think he thought he was doing good. And maybe he was. Pagodas like his took in those who had nowhere else to go. The money helped keep the temple going. We were practically in the backyard of the Ministry of Health, at the one place that had something to offer. While the so-called cure was questionable, the comfort was very real.

The story turned out to be a microcosm of the political, medical and social dynamics of the epidemic, as well as a reminder of the powerful human needs of hope and compassion.

Yet that wasn't the story I had written ahead of time, in my own mind. It was an important lesson and one I've had to learn over and over. Because while my profession has since changed a couple of times, every job has involved telling stories. And each has reminded me how limiting it can be to write our stories in advance.

Stories are how we understand our past, how we experience the world and how we come to know each other. They are the way we make sense of everything that happens. So they are wonderful tools in making sense of a situation, learning and leading - if we have the patience and curiosity to let the truest version of the story reveal itself.

It's all too tempting, though, to impose our narrative before we discover those nuances. How many times have we jumped to a conclusion only to find it incorrect or incomplete when we took the time to ask more questions, listen to more people and entertain the notion that the first assumption may not be the best?

You don't have to be a journalist to know that all too often, everyone ends up with a different mental and emotional version of what happens, even in the face of a common event. Your truth can be someone else's fake news. The key to a more collective understanding and shared vision is to invite the bigger, potentially more powerful picture that can come to light if we aren't filtering every impression through the lens of a prematurely fashioned narrative.

In other words, the best stories start with an empty page and an open mind.

I believe the story we write is the story we come to live. Our stories can make our lives narrower or expansive, hopeless or hopeful, static or evolving. The ultimate impact of a story will hinge on how it was created: in advance or in exploration. I vote for the latter, which reveals something truer, richer and deeper.