Writing the First Draft of History

I’ve been listening to a podcast these last couple weeks called The Dropout. It’s the story about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, founder & CEO of Theranos, which was once valued at nearly $10 Billion. Elizabeth was once the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.

As of the writing of this guide, Elizabeth has been indicted on multiple counts of fraud, and is facing up to 20 years in prison. The podcast goes through how it all got so bad and how she had created a very different 'story' about what she and her company were doing to 'change the world'. Her full story is one of the hottest pieces of ‘news’ over the past year.

I’m not going to get into her story. But I wanted to start this guide with it because of a sentence I heard this past week about the ‘news’... about how it is ‘the first rough draft of history.’

I heard it while re-watching one of my favorite films of 2018 called The Post. The line was spoken by Meryl Streep’s character Katherine Graham, who owned the Washington Post, as she was recounting something her husband had once said.

Here’s the thing about that sentence that I find myself pondering now - if the news is the first draft of history… who gets to write it?

The first and obvious answer is journalists. Talented individuals who take facts, add some context, and then package it into a narrative so that we are better informed about what is going on around us.

That sounds quite a lot like storytelling, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s nonfiction, but it’s still storytelling.

Well, I know I’m not blowing your mind with that connection. But I do want to give you (and myself) a moment to ponder this next thought: how do we decide who gets to be the storyteller?

Because here’s the thing about fictional storytelling - it doesn’t, usually, cause any harm to anyone.

But nonfictional stories, like The Dropout, or pretty much anything you’ve ever seen on a news channel - well those stories certainly end up causing a stir in people’s lives.

So in a way, the stories created by a nonfiction storyteller are kind of more important than fictional ones? Just in terms of human lives I mean.

Which brings me to my next point - doesn’t that make these storytellers quite powerful?

That’s something that my guest from last week’s Storytalking with Lakshya, Ravi Shankar Etteth, also mentioned -

“Good journalism is about bringing down people in power who have done wrong things. But ironically, good journalism makes you very powerful.”

Doesn’t all this mean that these storytellers have a lot of responsibility?

And isn’t playing the part of telling these stories in our society a huge responsibility?

Now let’s talk about this whole thing from another direction: social media.

Before social media, if we had to talk about what we thought about a certain situation or a person, and we didn’t work at a newspaper or a news channel, we would share those thoughts with our friends and family over social gatherings.

But with social media, we’re now all capable of ‘putting the people in power in check.’

So, I can sense that a part of you is wondering why I’m talking about all this in this guide. You come here for thoughts on storytelling, and here I am talking broadly about citizen journalism…

But wait. I promise you I have an unexpected thought up my sleeve that will connect it all back to how this affects you as a storyteller.

Donald Trump…

(I hope you didn’t just roll your eyes, but even if you did, please keep reading…)

Donald Trump and Elizabeth Holmes have one thing in common.

They both blame (or used to blame in Elizabeth’s case) the media for being out to ‘get them’.

And here’s where I bring it all back to storytelling and ‘the first draft of history’.

You have a history. It’s called your life. Every day you live, and every thing you say or do, gets added to your history.

So who, pray tell, writes the first draft of your history?

You do.

Feels obvious, right?

Well, the part of you that just said ‘well, yeah, who else would?’

Well, now imagine this - imagine that there are 1,000 ‘You’s’ reading this.

So technically, about 1000 of you are writing your own histories, yes?

And if you put together those 1,000 stories, that could be considered to be the combined history of 1,000 people, right?

Now change that number to 1 million.

Now make it 100 million.

You know what, make it 7 billion to round it up.

7 billion people, who are living and breathing right now as you read this, are adding something or the other to their history, and our combined history, every single day.

So what we say, or do, even the smallest thing, eventually becomes a part of our combined history.

How we behave with each other, how we treat each other, how we share what we feel about each other… all that that is being written down by us into this first draft.

So, now let’s come to the climatic portion of this guide… something you rarely see in nonfiction stories…

The people we are today, often times, we look back at the people who used to be before us… 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago… and we judge them based on their actions. Based on what they said or did. Based on how they treated each other.

So, now let’s travel to 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now into the future. To the people who are going to look back at us from now and judge us all together, as groups, based on what we said or did.

What history are we giving them?

What stories are we telling today about who we are?

Because even if you yourself aren’t particularly telling a ‘bad’ story, there is someone out there telling one that could hurt someone.

And because history will judge us all together, as the co-writers of this time’s first draft. doesn’t it make it our responsibility to make sure we hold our co-writers to a better standard? To keep them in check when they spread lies, or hatred?

I just realized (seriously, just now) that it’s Valentine’s Day today and I probably should have written a lighter guide along the lines of ‘how to write a love story’. Because I do write them sometimes, and I will probably write that guide properly some day…

But for now, if I had to connect this guide’s content to this day of love, then I’ll leave you with this…

Let’s co-write a history together that is full of love, and not the other thing.

Because whether we want the responsibility or not, we are the co-authors of our time.

I’m already typing my part… are you?