The Stories We Live: On Mystery, Meaning, and Why Yours Matters

By David Waterman

We are storytelling creatures.

We make sense of life by turning it into narrative. Plot. Cause and effect. This happened, so then I did that. I am this way because of what happened there. Or who didn’t show up. Or what I had to become.

But here’s the thing: real stories — the ones we live — don’t behave like the ones we’re used to watching.

They don’t always add up. They don’t wrap neatly. They change. Sometimes we revisit an old chapter and see something new, something we missed the first time. Sometimes even the past itself evolves — not because it changed, but because we did.

And yet we keep trying to “figure ourselves out,” as if we’re puzzles with a final answer. As if clarity will lead to closure, and then we can finally move on. As if one day, our story will suddenly make perfect sense.

The TV Version vs. Real Life

I used to make factual entertainment — real people, real stories, shaped for a watching audience. And here’s the thing: in TV, people have to make sense. Their stories need an arc. A hook. A simple cause-and-effect logic. You have to find a character the audience can get behind, and a story that will fit into a one-hour slot — ideally with a few twists and a tidy ending.

And it works. It entertains. Sometimes it even moves us.

But real people? Real people are never that neat.

You are never that neat.

Even the most layered high-end drama can’t hold a candle to your actual life — to the detail, the contradiction, the texture of your memories, your longings, your defences, your growth, your wounds, your grace.

You Are Too Vast to Quantify

And that’s the beauty of it. You are not a character. You are a mystery.

Not in a woo-woo, unreachable way. But in a very human way. You are evolving, changing, contradicting yourself daily. You are made up of many parts, many voices, many pasts that continue to breathe inside you.

And no single story could ever hold the whole of you.

Which is why the goal isn’t total self-understanding. You are simply too vast to ever be fully known — even by yourself. And that’s not a failure. That’s what makes you human.

So Why Bother Looking?

Because sometimes, in the looking, we find light.

Not answers, necessarily. But moments. Glimpses. We unfold facets of ourselves that throw gentle, sometimes piercing, light on who we are — or who we were becoming, even when we didn’t know it.

Therapy, writing, talking — they don’t give us tidy narratives. They help us tolerate complexity. They invite us to hold parts of our story we once left out. They give us a mirror — not to settle the mystery, but to stay in relationship with it.

Embracing the Mystery

If your life doesn’t make sense yet, maybe it’s not because you’ve missed something — but because you’re holding onto the idea that it’s supposed to.

Maybe your story is not a riddle to solve, but a relationship to stay in.

Because your story — however complicated, inconsistent, nonlinear — is real. And it’s yours.

And the act of turning toward it, with curiosity and compassion, might just be the most meaningful thing you ever do.

Even if you never find the ending.