The Stories We Tell—and the Words We Choose

For as long as I can remember—and certainly for many years—I have noticed something in the way we tell stories.

It is a subtle thing, so subtle that I suspect most people never notice it. In fact, I doubt many who use these words intend anything harmful. The habit has become so deeply woven into our everyday speech that it has become part of the grammar of storytelling.

Yet I also have little doubt that, for some, these same words are rooted in something more deliberate. Whether intentional or not, however, I believe the habit is worth examining.

Yesterday, while attending a large and remarkably diverse gathering, I overheard a conversation that brought this to mind. A middle-aged man was recounting how an acquaintance had been struck by a car while riding his motorcycle. Thankfully, the injuries were minor.

As he told the story—and each time he repeated it—he referred to the driver simply as "this damn Mexican."

The driver's ethnicity had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident.

A few days earlier, someone shared a story about a grocery store employee who had done a poor job bagging groceries. Throughout the story, the employee was described as "this young African American woman."

Again, I found myself wondering why.

Would the accident have been any different had the driver been White, Asian, or Hispanic? Would the poorly packed groceries have been any less frustrating had the employee been a man, or an older woman, or someone whose race was never mentioned at all?

The answer, it seems to me, is no.

So why do we so often include these details?

When race, ethnicity, or gender has no bearing on the story, why does it become part of the description? Why does it seem natural to mention characteristics that contribute nothing to understanding what actually happened?

I do not ask these questions to provoke outrage or to accuse every speaker of harboring prejudice. I suspect many people have never stopped to consider the words they choose because they have heard the same patterns their entire lives. The descriptions emerge almost automatically, passed from one generation to the next until they become invisible.

But perhaps that is precisely why they deserve our attention.

Language does more than communicate facts. It quietly reveals what we notice, what we consider important, and what assumptions we carry without realizing it. Sometimes the smallest, seemingly insignificant phrases tell us more about ourselves than the stories we are trying to tell.

Perhaps these descriptions are harmless habits. Or perhaps they are remnants of old ways of seeing the world that continue to echo through our conversations long after we believe we have moved beyond them.

I don't know.

What I do know is that the question is worth asking—not to shame one another, but to understand ourselves a little better.

This is not merely an American conversation. It is one that belongs to every society, because every culture develops its own shorthand, its own assumptions, and its own blind spots.

Progress rarely begins with certainty.

More often, it begins with someone quietly asking, "Why do we say it that way?"

— David

Nature Has No Agenda

This morning, I sat in my well-worn leather recliner, a calico cat stretched comfortably across my left arm while my right hand filled another page of my journal. It is part of my morning ritual whenever I am not on the road.

Eventually, I came to a stopping point. The pages of my journal remained open, but my pen rested quietly across them. I sat for a few moments longer, looking out the window. The sun had risen, and patches of blue sky had begun to appear through the dense green canopy of the trees.

My first reaction, almost instinctive, was relief. The violent storms and heavy rains that had swept through the night had either moved on or exhausted themselves somewhere beyond the horizon.

Then my thoughts drifted to another morning several years ago.

I had driven to Florida's Gulf Coast to witness Hurricane Michael firsthand—one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the United States. I wanted to see, firsthand, what a hurricane of that magnitude was truly like.

As I watched the storm unfold, I understood why so many who lived in its path described it as violent. The winds were relentless, the rain blinding, and the sheer power of the storm inspired both fear and awe.

Yet the greatest revelation came not during the hurricane itself, but the following morning.

I had spent the night in Fairhope, Alabama, many miles away from where the hurricane made landfall. As I walked the short distance from my hotel room to the breakfast area, I stopped almost involuntarily.

The sky was an impossibly deep blue. A warm, gentle breeze drifted steadily through the air. Everything felt peaceful.

Less than twenty-four hours earlier, I had been sitting in my Ford Expedition fewer than two hundred miles away, witnessing Hurricane Michael's fury. Now the air was calm, the sky inviting, and the world seemed almost untouched.

It was as though nothing had happened.

Later that morning, I drove toward the areas where the storm had passed. Even there, the skies remained brilliantly clear. As I continued west toward Pensacola, I passed dozens of surfers taking advantage of the larger waves the storm had left behind. Once again, beneath cloudless skies, life was already moving forward.

It was then that I realized something I have never forgotten.

Nature has no agenda.

The hurricane was not angry. It was not seeking revenge. It was not punishing anyone or intentionally destroying anything. It was simply responding to changes within the natural world, rebalancing itself according to forces far older than humanity. It just happened that people and their homes lay in its path.

For much of human history, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, and floods were believed to be the wrath of angry gods. People offered sacrifices in hopes of calming divine tempers and preventing another catastrophe.

Standing in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, I saw something entirely different.

Nature was not lashing out.

It was simply being nature.

The trees did not resent the wind. The birds did not curse the rain. The shoreline did not seek revenge against the sea. Everything simply adapted and continued.

Perhaps that is where we differ.

We often assign intention where none exists. We interpret hardship as hostility. We search for someone—or something—to blame. But nature offers another perspective. It reminds us that not every destructive force is driven by malice. Sometimes the world is simply responding to circumstances beyond our control.

This morning, as I sat once again in my recliner, the blue sky returned after another night of storms. It looked much the same as it did that morning in Alabama.

And once again, I was reminded that while nature eventually returns to balance, we humans often carry yesterday's storms far longer than we need to.