While watching an August 10, 2023, PBS NewsHour piece on the just-ended Taylor Swift tour, and Swift’s one billion dollars in ticket sales, I heard Mara Klaunig (a researcher at Camoun Associates who specializes in analyzing economic forces) say that performers like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé “own their narratives,” and that such ownership makes each so successful.

And then it hit me.

Somewhere along my way I must have lost ownership of my narrative, resulting in my failure to generate even ten dollars in ticket sales, let alone one billion dollars – not that I’m actually selling tickets to my personal and long-running show.

I looked back over my life in an attempt to determine where I lost my narrative.  Did I actually lose my narrative, or did I sell it, and if so, to whom did I sell my narrative, what price did my narrative fetch, and what did I do with the money?

Maybe my narrative was stolen, and if so, is there somebody out there living his – or her – life as me?  And if so, is this person living with my narrative able to generate one billion dollars in ticket sales?  Maybe it’s me who’s actually Taylor Swift.  Or Beyoncé.  Or maybe I’m Greta Gerwig, also mentioned in the NewsHour piece, principally because the film Barbie has one billion dollars in ticket sales.

All three are younger than me, so if any of them are using my narrative, I can predict, using family-based actuarial tables, that their exemplary careers are going to come to an abrupt halt sooner rather than later.  Maybe by Monday.  Next Thursday, tops.

But what if I have a hidden narrative, one that needs to be teased out, elicited, or (God forbid!) engendered by a skilled professional, like a Self-Certified Life Coach?

Maybe the day I was born He Whose Name May Not Be Uttered took the day off and let His wife Bernice hand out narratives?  And just my luck, Bernice had yet to have Her second cup of Folger’s and handed my narrative to some other lesser deserving newborn?

I’m reminded that Jackie Mason did a classic less-than-two-minute bit on going to a psychiatrist to find his “real me.”  What happens, says Mason, if he finds the real me, and the real me is worse?  And why should Mason pay the psychiatrist for his guidance?  Let the real me pay him!

But Mason is a guilty pleasure for me.  And speaking of guilty pleasures, how come I still have my guilty pleasures, but I apparently lost or sold my narrative?

I don’t know about you, but when I’m deeply troubled or conflicted, or when I begin to have doubts about my very existence, I turn to the one source that gives me the guidance I need every time: Etymonline, The Online Etymology Dictionary.  I know you probably go there often as well, and if you don’t, you should.

So I typed in OWN YOUR NARRATIVE, and you know what came up?  Nothing.

Nothing.

I was shocked, but I soon got over it.  That’s the type of guy I am.  And once I got over being shocked, the bright white light of insight filled me with its radiance and permitted me to see with a razor-like focus.  And just so you know, nothing … I repeat, NOTHING … goes better with a razor-like focus than Polar-brand lime-flavored Tonic Water, so I got me some out of my fridge.  Hold the gin, s’il vous plait.

The term “own your narrative” is a fairly recent and meaningless term of pop culture that attributes relational qualities – in this case, ownership – to something that is really really really not real, a personal narrative.  I like to say that the term “personal narrative” says everything and explains nothing.  Such terms emerge from the social sciences and have a brief moment in the sun before being relegated to the dustbin of colloquial phrases. Like unpack to mean analyze, which seems to be fading in use every day. And here’s a prediction. Folks will soon start using pivot to mean change jobs.

Sure, you can tell your story.  Others can tell your story, too, but why should I believe them, or you?  And while I am impressed with Taylor Swift’s, Beyoncé’s, and Greta Gerwig’s ability to achieve one billion dollars in ticket sales, ticket sales are expressed in numbers, just like home runs, election votes, daily high temperatures, and the like.  In other words, these numbers are facts. And while you or I can use such facts to compose a narrative, no one owns facts.

It was when I thought the word, “facts,” that I realized that I had neither lost nor sold my narrative.  Bernice didn’t screw up the day that I was born either.  Narrative ownership is just a weak metaphor for … something. And if I had a narrative, it would be the one I uttered when I saw a physician specializing in rehabilitative medicine and psychosomatic disorders in the late 1980s when I was struggling far more with arthritis than today.  After what I thought to be a cursory examination, the physician turned to me, pointed to my knees and said, “Your problem’s not there, your problem’s here (pointing to my head).”  My response was, “Doctor XXXXX, I like what’s up here, you figure out what’s wrong down here (pointing to my knees).”

And THAT is MY narrative. Don’t be fooled by the … ahem … narratives of others.