Who is writing the story of your life?
How we can make “masternarratives” work for us
Glasp’s Note: At Glasp, we value the close personal relationships we’ve built with thinkers, creators, and doers who fuel curiosity and growth. This week, we’re proud to spotlight
, our very first Glasp Talk guest and a true champion of accessible philosophy. Jonny is a bestselling author, TEDx speaker, columnist at , and the founder of , a global community of nearly a million curious minds. With his books translated into 22 languages and a gift for making profound ideas feel relatable and engaging, Jonny continues to inspire lifelong learners around the world—and we’re honored to be learning alongside him.
Most of life is boring. Nothing really happens.
If you spend a lot of time on social media, you wouldn’t believe it. Everyone on LinkedIn is getting promoted and suddenly has a podcast. Everyone on Instagram is on holiday or at some retreat — their faces aching from constant Cheshire grins. And the people of TikTok are trapped in some hellish, never-ending dance.
Social media curates peak moments. It collects and gathers together the occasional highlights of someone’s day, week, or month and presents them to the user in a neatly bound “home feed.” The impression you get, then, is that life is a jiving, smiling explosion of podcasters having a good time. But life is not like this. Most of our days are spent in the mindless drudgery that will never make it into a Hollywood biopic — washing the dishes, putting the kids to bed, going to the shops.
We all know this. Most people are rational and intelligent, and it takes only a moment’s reflection to appreciate that “social media is not life.” And yet, the mind is a complicated thing.
Earlier this year, I spoke with the philosopher Heather Widdows on the theme of “lookism” — the idea that we are oddly accepting of judging people by how they look. In our interview, Widdows introduced me to the “boomerang effect,” which is a strange psychological phenomenon where people do the opposite of what they’re told or what they think they should do. For example, with social media, we know that we shouldn’t aspire to be as unblemished and perfect as the photoshopped models we see on Instagram, and yet we try harder than ever to do so. We know that life is not a joyful parade of dancing, podcasting, and wellness retreats, and yet we feel as if our life ought to be like that anyway.
The stories we tell
Philosophers and psychologists sometimes talk about “the master narrative.”
A master narrative is a kind of script that accompanies almost all of our social roles and behaviours. Being a parent involves a certain script — you have to behave, talk, and even feel a certain way. A parent who does not claim that “my kids have made me the happiest I’ve ever been” is a scandal — breaking the taboo of the party line. A student, a waitress, a soldier, a vicar, a friend, and a lover all involve these narratives. And there is great tidal pressure to conform to them.
This problem multiplies when you zoom out further. Because there is also a master narrative around how we should live our entire lives. Reading this, you probably have internalised some idea of what a “good” or “full” life looks like. For me, growing up as a millennial in the UK, that narrative is: education, job, marriage, children, house, retirement, death. You can shuffle it about a bit and possibly blur the middle, but that’s essentially it.
So, where does our master narrative come from? Who is writing the script of our life? Social media is one part of it, for sure. It drip, drip, drips into your psyche, defining how you “ought” to live. But that tiny icon on your phone is still only one piece of a hugely complicated jigsaw.
The power of a handful
Philosophy and psychology make for good bedfellows. Psychology becomes most relevant when laced with a bit of philosophy; philosophy often becomes more reputable when bolstered by a bit of psychology. And so the question “Who is writing my master narrative?” is a good one for both parties to consider.
In 1979, the psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner argued that our master narratives are defined by various “ecosystems” in which we all live. These can be huge, like the cultural zeitgeist of living in the 21st century, or they can be more subtle, like the social norms of your country. But Bronfenbrenner argued that the most influential ecosystem defining your master narrative is your “microsystem.” The microsystem is a surprisingly small group of individuals who matter to you — your parents, your siblings, your best mates, that inspirational teacher at school you desperately wanted to impress. Bronfenbrenner’s theory shows us that in a world where two billion people can connect through a single app, only about ten people really matter.
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus once said, "If a companion is dirty, his friends cannot help but get a little dirty too, no matter how clean they started out." If we spend an evening in mean-spirited gossip, we will become spiteful and cruel. If our friends have no ambition or mock the aspirational, we will learn to never dream. If our friends celebrate ignorance, we will give no weight to education or learning.
Changing your master narrative
The stories that we carry in our heads are hugely important because they define your expectations and aspirations. These, in turn, motivate you to action — but they also make you feel sad, depressed, and disappointed when you don’t get what you want. If you expected to get married to your partner, you will be devastated at breaking up. If you aspired to get that promotion, you will be depressed if someone else gets it. The narrative we carry — what we want our future to look like — defines everything.
So, here are two practical things we can all do to make these master narratives work better for us.
First, sit down, alone, and try to articulate what your master narrative is. What does “happiness” look like to you? How do you define a “good life”? What do you want to get out of your job, your relationship, your family? The task here is to be as unflinchingly honest as possible. Is looking like that person with 5% body fat part of your narrative? Is having a certain car, a certain house, and a certain kind of family part of your narrative? This is why this task needs to be done alone. Friends — even your best friends — are part of an ecosystem defining your master narrative. Only you can scrutinise it honestly.
Second, either accept your narrative and work towards it, or change it. If you’re happy with trying to get rich, then get busy getting rich. If you’re okay with being a stay-at-home family person, then commit to that. But if you are unhappy with what you secretly aspire to be, then you need to change that. You need to create a counter-narrative. Some people have the strength of character to simply do this — they imagine a new life, choose a new path, and go about it. But most of us will need to change ecosystems.
If we return to Epictetus, we can borrow a bit more Stoic wisdom. Stoicism is the philosophy of changing what you can and accepting what you can’t. There are some ecosystems we cannot change. We cannot change living in the 21st century. We can’t (easily) change social norms or other people’s master narratives. But we can change how much attention we give to other people’s master narratives. We can delete TikTok, or choose to unfollow someone on Instagram.
Most crucially of all, though, we can change the most important ecosystem: we can change the company we keep. If somebody brings you down or makes you smaller in any way, you have the choice to remove them from your life. Your friend’s life doesn’t have to be your life. Your parents’ path doesn’t need to be your path.
We each have only one story to tell and one narrative to write. Don’t waste it by trying to copy someone else’s.
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🟥 Glasp Talk with Jonny Thomson:
, is a bestselling author of three books, a columnist at Big Think, a TEDx speaker, and the founder of Mini Philosophy — a thriving community of around a million curious minds. His book, Mini Philosophy, has been translated into 22 languages, and he’s known all over the world for making philosophy accessible, relatable, and fun.
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This is an amazing post! It reminds me of several past great people, and let me think if I'm living by following my narrative. Thank you for contributing!
These are my favorite quotes:
"Most crucially of all, though, we can change the most important ecosystem: we can change the company we keep."
"We each have only one story to tell and one narrative to write. Don’t waste it by trying to copy someone else’s."
Also, here's my learning: https://glasp.co/kei/p/b1d8e94c59411ca1f68d
This resonated deeply. It’s so easy to absorb someone else’s narrative — especially in the age of curated feeds — without ever stopping to ask: Is this really the life I want? Loved the reminder to sit with our own definition of a meaningful life and courageously rewrite the script when needed. Thank you for this reflective piece 🙏