We Are Always the Stories We Tell Ourselves - Some More Grandiose Than Others, Most Glorified By the Hunters on Their Roads with Best Intentions

If I didn't experience it, I wouldn't believe it. The fabrications we've watched over and over again these last few years that have made us go hmmm, subsided a little (ha! never), so witnessing the storytelling where I work is alarmingly amazing. How do we weave a story about our stories which are totally untrue and ridiculous, and create a narrative about our falsehoods to convince you that our narratives are better than the ones you've been living and experiencing yourself?

Nope. Not 1984. 2022. Newspeak. Let us tell you the story of everything, even when the story isn't true, but we want you to believe it. Let us convince you that what you think you are seeing is not what you are seeing because, well, our NARRATIVE is superior to yours, and we don't want you to see what you're seeing, because that is what we've created for you to be seen.

I am hearing Michelle Farrell on this, a colleague who often calls me with he phrase, "Oh, my head." This is her expression when she's trying to figure out things that make absolute NO SENSE.

How I am reading the story continues to be the same way I've been reading it since 2011. We have fantastic faculty who are brilliant at what they do. Our students continue to be rather amazing, for the most part, albeit homogeneous and not a reflection of the world. There are numerous people who have worked tirelessly to make change, only to be humiliated or let go. It's exhausting. Yet, the one consistency has been their narrative needing to be sold to the world: one with sunglasses, rules for how you should sign your name, and what is okay to promote and represent. 

This is where narration becomes fiction. It's not real. It's fabrication. We who live and see and experience what we live and see and experience, should be allowed to name it as such. 

Nope. We get a narration that says, "This is what you should see, and we want you to see, because we have this narration on pens, sunglasses, and t-shirts to roll out to the next generation who we want to believe in this narrative. 

My lord...how the heck did I ever end up in higher education at a predominantly White, wealthy (definitely not healthy) institution? I just shake my head and think, "Huh?"

But the kids make me proud. Colleagues make me proud. There are so many who see what I see exactly as I see it. So when they come forward with the narrative they want me to believe, I know that it isn't true. Why? We're historians, writers, researchers, sociologists, scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, nurses, educators, and thinkers who LIVE a narrative every day. It's just not the one they want us to believe is true. It's the most insane thing ever.

I think what they really meant to say is FICTION or FABRICATION, covering up the lies they want us to believe. It's 1980 again...4 years before Newspeak was supposed to happen. THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY

 My head is just spinning.