They Weren’t My Stories

I was walking down to the dock with Jonathan when he asked me to switch to his right side. He’s deaf in his left ear. The hearing left him years ago, around the same time he lost his first wife.

As we talked, I asked him something I really wanted to know. Did he hold any bitterness about how it happened? A different doctor or antibiotics might have saved his hearing.

He didn’t go there. What he said instead has stayed with me. He’d read many stories, but they weren’t his stories.

There’s a version of his life where the hearing loss never happened. He could live in that version, bitter about the one he actually got. But that version didn’t happen. Holding onto bitterness would mean wrapping himself in a life that isn’t his.

So, he lives the story that’s actually his, hearing loss and all.

It made me think about all the ways we end up living stories that aren’t ours. We get lost in bitterness over the life we wanted. We live out a story someone handed us. We live the one society writes for us.

This is the heart of what Heart-Strong is about. And it’s why the adventure is growing into something bigger. Heart-Strong is becoming a nonprofit, built to help people live their own stories. Not the bitter ones. Not the borrowed ones. The ones that are theirs.

Read the full piece on Substack.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.