"Why is the cat suddenly so aggressive?" my husband asked. Twice. I explained that the cat had been lonely for the last three days. We'd been away from Friday morning to Sunday night, and our cat, while he spends part of every day in the farthest downstairs room alone, he also spends part of the day claiming our attention. When my husband was the only one available, the cat expected him to pay attention.
Defining the cat's behaviour as aggressive made it not only undesirable but unacceptable. I had a different understanding shaped by a different narrative. Normally, the cat knows that my husband's story about him is not welcoming, but a couple days with the house to himself shifted his needs. My husband could not see the cat's reason for rubbing his legs, reaching up with claws out, meowing persistently. My story of loneliness made me much more open to the cat's persistence.
I want to explore this idea of the narratives that shape our understanding in two more ways: the political and the personal.
The horrible fighting in Ukraine is killing people, destroying buildings, sending civilians fleeing for their lives, ripping apart cities and societies. Much of the world is calling this a war. Russia is calling it a special military operation. What we call it does not change the suffering and destruction, but it does shift the way it is understood.
Among the justifications for this military invasion was the claim that Ukraine was building a plutonium based dirty bomb. This claim has been called ludicrous. But I remember when the United States claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and invaded on that basis. The American narrative worked at that time, with much of the world supporting their actions. The Russian narrative is not convincing the west.
With each of Russia's claims--Ukraine is preparing to use poison gas, for example--the idea is denied by Ukraine with the additional comment that whatever Russia claims about the other side indicates something Russia is planning to do. Fortunately, that narrative has not been seen in action--we have not seen dirty bombs or poison gas.
Russia has also claimed that genocide is taking place in the Donbas region. Since the terrible loss of life in Rwanda, the world has tried not to ignore genocide. The problem with the Russian narrative is that much of the world does not believe that the tensions between people of Russian and Ukrainian descent within Ukraine have led to genocide.
Lately, the rhetoric is less and the fighting more. What I long for is a narrative that will open a door for President Putin to put an end to the fighting. Something like the way the U.S. declared victory in Vietnam and left.
What about our personal narratives, the stories we tell that help us understand our own lives?
A friend has shared her journey through breast cancer on social media. She has talked about what it was like to be in remission, until last week. A long post explained that the CT scan showed the cancer had spread. Stage four. What followed was a narrative about how she plans to approach this stage of her journey. She included a quote from her book The Mended Mirror: Reflections on Life. She wrote, "We need a narrative that sees the goodness, connects to the energy of love, and calls us to live as ones committed to the common good, where resources are shared, gifts are celebrated, the Earth is respected, and we listen to the wisdom within us and amongst us." It is her intention to seek connection and goodness is this time.
We perceive the world through our culture, our world view, our prejudices. We shape how we perceive the world through the stories we tell. We shape how we understand our lives through the stories we tell ourselves and others about our days and years. There are narratives that mask reality. We can tell stories of our lives that hide the hurt. But we can also tell stories of finding resilience in difficulty. We can tell stories of discovering gems--in ourselves, in friendship--when we were the most tired. The narrative matters.
Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation
