Our sense of reality is something that I've often thought about. On many occasions we hear people's versions of the same thing and they are quite different.
As a child I loved listening to adults tell of their experiences. There are some people I loved to listen to even if they repeated the same story many times. A good story teller always told the same version.
An exercise I did with my students, was to start a sentence at the front of the row and see what ended 5 seats later. All of this was oral and it was pretty wild what ended at the last of the row. Sometimes the exercise was sabotaged when they decided to deliberately twist things. Then they wanted another try to do the exercise correctly.
Many times we hear people giving an account of a common event and there are different versions. In fact there may be arguments about the accuracy of the version .
My brother and I have versions of the same event that are fairly similar. There are certain events he can not remember at all and certain things I do not recall.
For my wife and I, quite often our version of events is quite different. Sometimes it seems that we are not even talking about the same event.
So what makes for the differences of the perceptions we have of the same event? Does space matter? If I'm behind a certain event and you are ahead does that make for some difference in an account? What influence does our life experience make in how we see an event.? What difference does experience after an event have on our account of an event? Does being male or female make a difference in the version? Does age make a difference?
Now I consider these issues, because like it or not, I have been labelled as a story teller on my blog. I appreciate comments which show appreciation for what I have written.
The stories I tell are of the experiences I've had. How close to reality are my accounts? I like to think my accounts are fairly accurate. My life has been adventurous and I've often experienced some interesting times. There are different ways to tell a good story.
I think a combination of these things have to be in place to tell a story. The information and experience have to be present. Now the event can be fairly common place but if you have any idea of how to tell a story the event becomes interesting.
So do you think the relation of events is always precise or is there variation.from the original?
