What stories are you telling yourself? What if you got curious, instead?

If I could be so wrong about a stranger, what stories have I accepted as true about myself without ever asking another question?

I was at a restaurant this spring, sitting at a long family style table. Dim lights, din of chatter, good food. Sitting next to me was a young man, dining alone. Curious. An added layer of curiosity was that he was scribbling furiously in his notebook throughout the entirety of our meal. He was in the corner of my eye throughout the evening. And I found myself constructing stories about what he could possibly be writing in that dimly lit restaurant in downtown Toronto on a Friday night. I settled on the idea that he was in the middle of writing some sort of novel.

When my dining partner and I were ready to leave, she left for the bathroom before we headed out. In the lull of our conversation, I decided that I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer.

“Excuse me? I am sorry to interrupt but I can’t help but wonder… what are you writing about?” I said as politely and unobtrusively as possible.

He looked up from his writing and let out a friendly sigh.

“Oh, well. So… My girlfriend and I broke up. And I still have a lot to say. But, I have a really hard time saying things in the moment. So I thought, if I can write out what I want to say, maybe I’ll have better luck when we do speak again…”

I remember feeling slightly embarrassed at how confidently I had written his story in my head. One notebook, one Friday night, and I had cast him as a novelist.

He was a heartbroken lone traveler, journaling his way to confidence and clarity… and a second chance. 

Since that night, I’ve been attuned to how quickly we fill in blanks. We create motives, identities, narratives, sometimes with remarkable confidence. And sometimes all it takes is one question to discover an entirely different truth.

And, if I could be so wrong about a stranger, what stories have I accepted as true about myself without ever asking another question?

Maybe curiosity is less about finding answers and more about resisting the urge to invent them. Maybe it’s one of the few things that still lets us discover people as they are instead of who we assume them to be.

And maybe, because I asked one question on a spring night in Toronto, two people had a conversation they otherwise wouldn’t have.