Same Old Story

I make up stories for my nephew. “It can be about anything,” I tell him. “Dolphins or tractors or kings or magic....”

“Pizza,” he says.

He never gets tired of hearing the same story about pizza (“Once there was a mommy pizza, a daddy pizza, and a baby pizza who all lived in an oven…”), over and over and over.

Adults are the same. How often do you want to hear the same tropes, the same basic formulas? Yet another whodunit. Yet another romance. Yet another adventure.

Or take politics. We tune in to our favorite news sources and editorials and podcasts, hoping to hear the same pronouncements and values we heard yesterday (e.g., “Capitalism is evil!" or “Socialism is evil!”). Even at our most adult, we aren’t sophisticated creatures.

I’m no different. When a friend sends me an article I disagree with or asks me to watch something that isn’t my taste, I balk.

Then I remember that damn pizza story. And I try to open up to something new.