Stories

When a person tells you a story about something they experienced, chances are that what you hear is not exactly what happened. They might have forgotten some detail, or paraphrased a quote or even embellished the truth. The human memory has amazing capabilities, but it is far from perfect.

While sometimes stories change accidentally, sometimes people change stories on purpose. They might explain every gory detail to a best friend, but soften the story to tell it to their mom. Maybe they use every four-letter word in the book when telling the story at a bar, but filter what they say when telling the story at work.

For example, I don’t like one of my jobs very much. When my boyfriend asks about it, I cut loose and vent about every person who is difficult to work with, every computer system that doesn’t work like it is supposed to and how boring I am and how useless I feel when I am there. When I talk about work to my parents, I say something like “i’m not really getting anything out of it.” When a supervisor at work asks me how I’m doing, I say “Oh fine, more constant feedback would be beneficial.” When a random coworker asks me, I say it’s going well.

I filter myself according to who I am talking to, but when someone is talking to me I don’t consciously think about the details they are leaving out or how they are framing the story when they tell it to me as opposed to when they tell it to someone else. Most of the time I just assume I am getting the whole story. I only notice the filters when someone I am with starts telling a story I have heard before, but the content changes.

It makes me wonder why we have these filters. I’m thinking it’s about social survival. If I just let loose at work about how I hate it, I might lose my job (and therefore the best part about it – the paycheck). If I tell the random coworker that I am not happy there, they might pry and get more personal than I would like. I use a very limited filter when I am talking to my boyfriend for exactly the opposite reason – I want it to be very personal.