I'm working on lyrics for a song...

November 13, 2024 7:09 AM

... about stories I tell myself. So you lived life for some amount of time. You learned some lessons. You tell yourself, Ah I see now the I should do this with that, move this way when that way comes, and so on. Then after even more experience, you discover that the story you have been telling yourself is wrong or at the very least inadequate

What is that story?
How does it make you feel to discover it has been wrong?

posted by falsedmitri to Human Relations (6 answers total)

Simply put: The more you know, you know you don't know.

You have to give yourself the grace to know that you did the best with what you had at the time. It's the sign of a good human that you are growing and learning; that's a good thing, not a bad thing. Maybe a little sad that you were wrong, but proud of yourself for maturing.

Are you mad at your 2-year-old self for pooping your diapers? No; you did the best you could at the time.
posted by hydra77 at 8:00 AM on November 13 [1 favorite]

ideally, it helps me see that whatever i might conclude with this new knowledge might be destined for the same fate, and helps me not do anything based on this new knowledge that might later prove to be ill-informed

mileage may vary based on age, but mostly i'm able to accept what happened holistically. wish i could've gotten it right in the first place, but probably i was only now in a place to see what i'm seeing, and maybe had to go through this stuff to get here
posted by troywestfield at 9:36 AM on November 13 [1 favorite]

There was a meme-type thing I saw a while ago;

Me: Yes, I did some dumb things, but that was then. I'm a different person now.

Them: .... it happened yesterday.

But I feel like, even so-- I -am- a different person now. Heck, if the stupid thing I did was bad enough, I may well have utterly changed my whole life, forever. I'll never be the person I was, again.

The thing is-- we cannot see the future. Think of everything you've ever dreaded, how you imagined it would happen, how you tried to plan and visualize and work out what you'd do in each and every eventuality... and when it did happen, did it happen -exactly- as you thought it would? No, it didn't. Maybe it went worse. Maybe it went better. Maybe it was about like you expected, but you never imagined that the other person would be wearing cologne that reminded you of your 3rd grade teacher. There was no way you could have forseen that, nothing you could have done to plan for that.

As Captain Picard says:
"It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life."
posted by The otter lady at 10:08 AM on November 13 [1 favorite]

Some lessons we learn are wrong. Some are superseded with new information. I was taught that the atom only had three particles. Time for a new lesson.

In making our stories, we did what we could with what we had, and it still isn't quite right. It's hard to face that somehow you've got it wrong, yet again, but facing it's what lets you grow.

Getting all mindfulness with these internal stories really helps.. you sit with the story for a while, note how it makes (and made) you feel, thank it for being part of your journey, and let it go.

This quote resonated with me:

"I forgive myself for what I did" and "I should not have done that" are two statements that can and should coexist. You can forgive yourself while holding yourself accountable. You can understand that you fucked up while also understanding that you're human.
― alhaithamcore on Tumblr

A couple of quotes from unknown wise people:

Forgive yourself. Not just once. But again, and again, and again. As many times as it takes to find peace.

The versions of my life I didn't choose are none of my business.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:47 AM on November 14 [1 favorite]

I told myself that everyone would look down at me for getting divorced, that my life would fall apart without him, that if I just tried harder it would work, that what he did wasn't so bad. But we did get divorced, and I learned who I am without him, and that I am resilient, and that I made my life crazy by working so hard to make it right. And people who I never suspected were actually rooting for me all along. Divorce is such a common place thing now, but I learned so much from the process.
posted by SyraCarol at 7:31 PM on November 14 [1 favorite]

I've reread this thread a few times because I feel like there's more than one question being asked here

I occasionally moonlight as a semi-professional songwriter, and song craft is one issue you raise

Whereas most of the replies seem to deal with the emotional content of what your song intends to express. Wrangling with the existential dilemma how a path of seeking knowledge inevitably reveals how accidentally foolish or ignorant you were at any arbitrary point in the past

What kind of song are you writing? If I get stumped about how to express something I'll often try to think of how another songwriter tried to express a similar idea. I tend towards somewhat traditional acoustic guitar and voice folk music when I try to write so Dylan's "My Back Pages" was the first thing that came to me as an example of a song that expresses something a long the lines of what you're getting at

Could be a different example if you're hearing a pop song or industrial or r&b or you think Bob Dylan is wack or that example completely misses the mark of what you want to express. You could also expand beyond songs and look at how any other writer tried to talk about a similar feeling - Steinbeck or Camus or Shelly or whoever

Then you gotta sit down and make it have some kinda rhythmic lyrical content and chord changes, etc...

So, like I said, it's kind of a broad question to my thinking
posted by SystematicAbuse at 12:30 AM on November 17