We construct our sense of reality through the stories we tell ourselves. But the accuracy of those stories is easily distorted and flawed. There was a moment this week where my siblings and I were sitting in a circle in the lobby of the hospital waiting to hear how our dad was going to come through surgery. I said we need to have Dad's advance medical directive in hand going forward for the future. My little brother responded that he has those papers. Then a conversation happened in our circle.

Someone could write an interesting novel by going around the circle and listening to each narrative we constructed for ourselves about that conversation: exactly what was said, what the words meant to each of us, what we believe was said, and how the words made us feel. Each story would be different. What does that mean? What can we learn from that?