They are different.

Explanations aim to tell us why something has happened in the way it has; usually end of argument.  Explanations are very helpful in the right places, but not in the wrong places.  The temperature of boiling water at sea level is 100C, but at 9,068 metres is 71.3C and there’s an explanation for this.

Narratives don’t try to tell us why something has happened in the way it has, but only that it has.  They can be very open-ended, leaving us with unanswered questions which need to be explored.  I know that as we meet at an elevation of 229 metres hot water will boil at 99.2C, but why have you asked me to share a hot cup of tea with you at that height?

Wisdom is not only an accumulation of explanations but of narratives too.  It’s what I’ve called complexipacity: the capacity to thrive both with what we can see and is explained, and also what we do not see and is random.  We believe we think or feel or behave in the ways we do for reasons we understand, but often we don’t.*

We’re all prone to this.  It’s a wonder we survive.  Nassim Taleb has written about how hard we find it to keep our lives open to more input and insight – to be what he calls sceptical empiricists – as we want to move towards a conclusion; Daniel Kahneman warns us that our inquiring thinking process is lazy, not only finding an easier answer but even substituting the question.

Perhaps we can say, explanations promise objectivity; narratives admit subjectivity.  You’ll probably guess what I’m trying to write is more narrative than explanation.  Where does this take us?

Narratives are open to experimentation and innovation and failure and learning and development in which I am changed as well as being a means of bringing change.  Through practices and rhythms held within these narratives we find ourselves changing: our brains rewire, we integrate the energies of body, mind, emotions, and spirit.  I am more open to others and to my world and to my future Self.  I am becoming slowly but surely – I call it a slow journey in the same direction – more aware of who I am and why I do the things I do.  I have no illusions of being able to do what others are able to, only to do as much as I can with who I am.

(*You may read something in my words today and respond  in a particular way, but it may not be what I’ve said but a memory I’ve triggered of what someone else has said or done.)