We are all villains in someone else’s story
The constant clash of monsters and knights in our narratives.
I had always had this crazy thought about myself. You know, I think, I am the good guy in my kind of adventure. Since I am me, I cannot possibly be a bad guy in my own story, can I?
I am the leading actor. People come and go around me, co-exist with me and eventually play a small role in my journey in life.
Most people are innocent bystanders. They are there just for a few blinks of the eye. I never see them again.
Others are there to discuss with me and to provide some service. They have the filler roles and they are the plot helpers, allowing the tensions to increase or deflate. They are the supporting actors who do their utmost to allow my adventure to unveil. The cashier in the local supermarket, a neighbor or even a stranger that I helped once on the street are part of this category.
Then, there are the main actors with bigger or smaller roles who play on different sub-stories of my life. Sometimes these stories are intertwined and the same person has to play multiple parts, and in some other cases, the person is enjoying a whole smaller independent story by themselves. I would place here all the people that I have around me, and I keep some kind of a relationship with such as colleagues, friends, family and significant others.
And last but not least, I have few but enough villains in my personal story. Devious personalities that endeavor to make a dent on my shiny armor. In this category, I would place only, but a handful of people and I could even enumerate them with their names. They represent the ultimate opposite of me and they are my arch nemesis. The black spots in my white canvas. The shadow parts of my adventure.
And then my adventure unfolds as a typical fairy tale. I have to confront the evildoers or to stop them from harming my inner circle. And each sub-story closes or opens with the rise or the fall of the proverbial villain.
But thinking back to it I can see a flaw to this worldview.
It is understandable believing that I live in a personal adventure and fairy tale. I believe that most people do. We all have to arrange the proper narrative in our heads to make sense of the everyday insanity.
But seeing myself as the sole valiant knight can create fallacies regarding who is the bad guy in my stories.
Because I believe that everyone sees their self as the good guy.
And also everyone resonates with the valiant knight.
Let alone that everyone thinks that their interests and values are the right ones.
And that means that even my personal villains are the good guys in their own stories. And, maybe, I am the villain in theirs.
Or even worst, I might be the bad guy involuntarily in someone else’s adventure.
Because at the end of the day, there are no good guys and bad guys.
There is just us vs them. And deliberate or unnecessary conflicts.
So maybe, I should try to get down from my high horse.
The whole world does not revolve around me. and I do not always have to rationalize my actions as divine and heroic.
After all, we are all villains in someone else’s story.
Originally posted at Thanos Antoniou — The voice inside my head
