Stories About Big Things

There is an undercurrent in our collective discourse. It’s not always obvious, or even tangible for that matter, but as long as we’ve been coming together in groups, there has been an ongoing and evolving story about who we are, where we’ve come from and where we are going.

Humans are storytelling creatures. Storytelling helps us build collective understanding and solidarity. There’s much written about why and how it’s done, and what it achieves. I don’t want to get into the details of that here, suffice to say that storytelling is fundamental to who we are.

It’s with this in mind that I note that, in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, there’s a narrative that suggests we like to think we care about big things.

Important things.

How we treat each other. The kind of world we are creating. Whether things are fair. Whether our lives are getting better or worse.

In traditional media, popular culture, film, books, podcasts and on the ever-growing social domains, there are countless pieces of content where we talk about meaning, purpose, justice and connection. We say those are the things that matter.

However, when you examine our actions, when you watch how we actually spend our time, energy and attention, something else is going on.

These stories about big things don’t appear to be more than lip service.

Many of us, perhaps most of us, are not really living with those bigger narratives. We’re not asking grand questions, let alone trying to answer them. Instead, the overwhelming story we hear and tell is one of comparison.

In many aspects of our lives we are unconsciously, but constantly, measuring ourselves against other people. It’s a never-ending assessment of who is ahead or behind. Who is doing life better or worse. Who is more successful, more attractive, more fulfilled, more interesting. Who has the better career, lifestyle, body, partner, house or even, ironically, sense of self.

It’s a confusing phenomenon given how much we like to talk about big things. Our grandest narratives are about the triumphs and struggles of the human condition. But in the background, or more importantly, in our everyday reality, is an ever-present competition, subtle enough that we do not always notice it, but strong enough that it shapes almost everything we do.

It plays out in what we buy and what we consume, but also in what we give our attention to and where we spend our time. In the age of individualism and consumerism, status competition has become one of the defining stories of modern life.

Status competition itself is not new. Humans have always compared themselves to one another. But the way it manifests in our time feels different. More intense and ingrained. We narrate ourselves through individual lifestyle, productivity, aesthetics and consumption. We are encouraged to, and indulge in, building identities through what we display and perform.

This is what individualism and consumerism often look like day-to-day. Not big questions about humanity or the future in any meaningful sense, but a kind of endless podium gazing. A soft, ongoing competition that pulls our attention toward ourselves as individuals, and away from anything larger or shared.

These stories are small, both in duration and context. Not because everyday life is unimportant, but because they narrow what we are capable of caring about.

Big things require a different kind of attention. They ask us to look beyond our own position in the world and into something communal. They ask us to hold complexity, to sit with discomfort, to stay engaged even when there is no immediate reward.

Status competition does the opposite.

It constricts our worldview. It brings everything back to how we, as individuals, are doing. How we look, how we compare, how we spend in relation to one another. It rewards what is visible, quick and personal, and pushes aside anything slower, deeper or collective.

Over time, that shift becomes a cultural filter.

We start to treat the big things as background noise. Important in theory, but not enough to compete with the day-to-day work of managing our own lives and our own sense of progress. 

And so, we tell ourselves a story. A story that we care.

I’m sure, in many ways, we actually do. But care that is forgotten. That never really shows up in how we live is a strange kind of care. It becomes branding, performance or guilt transference. Something symbolic rather than real.

Worse, we do not even need to stop believing in big things for this to happen. We just have to keep choosing smaller ones.

To stay distracted enough, busy enough, comfortable enough, that the deeper questions never have to come to the surface. And because this is normal, because it is how most people around us are living, it does not feel like a problem.

It feels like life.

But there is a cost.

When everything is filtered through status, we lose the ability to relate to one another outside of it. Others become reference points rather than people. Community becomes optional rather than fundamental. Even our sense of self becomes tied to how we perceive ourselves in relation to others, rather than who we actually are.

The bigger things then slip further into the background of the story because they cannot compete with a culture built around immediate gratification and visible reward. Stories about justice, responsibility, meaning or collective flourishing do not offer the same feedback loop as consumption, attention or status.

So we tell ourselves we will come back to them later. But later rarely comes.

The story simply rolls onto the next purchase, the next comparison, the next distraction, the next performance of a meaningful life.

If we want to care about big things in any real sense, something has to change. Not just in what we say we value, but in what we actually give our attention to. In the mundane, daily choices about what matters and what does not.

Because as long as we remain caught in the narrative of status, the story stays small. And the things that matter most will continue not to.

Until they do.