The Stories We Inherit

None of us enter the world with our own ideas.

Before we learn to read, before we learn to think of ourselves as independent people, stories are already waiting for us. Stories about our country, about our religion. Stories about our history. Stories about what success looks like, about family. Stories about who belongs and about who doesn’t. We inherit these narratives so early and so completely that we often mistake them for objective truth. The older I get, the more I realize that growing up is not simply learning new things. It is learning how to examine the things I was taught before I was old enough to question them.

I’ve found myself thinking about the word indoctrination. It has become one of those words people throw around constantly. Everyone seems convinced that someone else is being indoctrinated. The people on the other side of the political aisle. The people in a different religion. The people raising their children differently. The people watching the wrong news channel. But the older I get, the less interested I become in asking whether people are influenced. Of course they are. We all are. None of us are self-created.

We inherit language before we can speak it. Values before we can evaluate them. Historical narratives before we can investigate them. Assumptions about morality before we can define it for ourselves. We absorb ideas about the world long before we develop the ability to challenge them. The more interesting question is not whether we inherit stories. The question is what we do with them? What makes inherited stories so powerful is that they rarely feel like stories at all. Because they are our shared reality. But perhaps an even harder question is this:

Why do we defend inherited beliefs so fiercely?

For a long time, I assumed it was because people were stubborn or unwilling to change their minds. Now I’m not so sure. I think we defend inherited beliefs because they eventually stop feeling like beliefs at all. They become identity. They become memories. They become the family traditions and childhood routines. They become the stories our grandparents told around the dinner table. The songs we sang in church. The holidays we celebrated without ever asking why. The history lessons we memorized before we knew history could be interpreted differently. To question those stories can feel like questioning the people who loved us. Sometimes it can even feel like questioning ourselves.

Maybe that’s why changing our minds can feel strangely similar to grief. Not because we’re necessarily losing the truth. But because we’re letting go of familiarity. There is a vulnerability in admitting that something you’ve believed for years deserves another look. Not because you want to reject it. But because you respect it enough to understand it. The beliefs we inherit become the background music of our lives. They shape our assumptions about what is normal, respectable, patriotic, moral, and true. Because they are familiar, they often become invisible.

We can usually recognize the narratives shaping other people. We can see the influence of someone else’s religion. Someone else’s politics. Someone else’s culture. Someone else’s education. What is far more difficult is recognizing the stories that shaped us. The stories that taught us who deserves our sympathy. The stories that taught us what success looks like. The stories that taught us what kind of life is worth living. Most of us inherit these assumptions so gradually that we mistake them for common sense. But common sense is often just culture that has become invisible.

History has made this increasingly difficult for me. When I first began studying history, I thought it would provide answers. I imagined history as a collection of facts waiting to be uncovered and understood. Instead, I found uncertainty. Records disappear. Entire lives go undocumented. Powerful people preserve some stories and erase others. Victors shape the narrative. Voices are lost. The further I studied, the more complicated the past became. I found that unsettling at first. Now I think it has made me more humble because the more I study history, the less certain I become. Not because I believe truth is unknowable. Not because every perspective is equally valid. But because history has taught me how often people have been absolutely convinced they were right.

Entire societies have believed they were defending civilization while participating in injustice. Religious communities have justified exclusion while believing they were acting out of moral conviction. Nations have celebrated policies that later generations would condemn. The people living through those moments were not uniquely foolish. They were often intelligent, sincere, and deeply committed to what they believed was right. What they lacked was not certainty. They had plenty of that. What they lacked was the ability to imagine that the stories they inherited might be incomplete. For a long time, I thought questioning inherited beliefs meant rejecting them. Now I think it means understanding them. There is a difference. The goal of deconstruction is not demolition. It is examination.

It is taking apart the ideas we inherited, looking at the pieces, and asking where they came from. Some ideas survive that process. Others don’t. Some become stronger because they have been tested. Others reveal themselves to be built on assumptions we never realized we were carrying. The older I get, the more I think maturity requires a certain amount of deconstruction. Not because everything we’ve inherited is wrong, but because everything we’ve inherited deserves to be understood. Otherwise we risk confusing familiarity with truth. We risk believing something simply because it has always been there. And history is full of examples of things that felt natural, inevitable, and unquestionable until someone finally challenged them. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether many of history’s greatest failures begin there. Not with hatred. Not with ignorance. But with unquestioned assumptions.

Before we learn not to see certain people, we often inherit stories about who belongs and who doesn’t. Before we justify inequality, we inherit stories about what is deserved. Before we accept cruelty, we inherit stories that make that cruelty easier to explain. The stories we inherit shape the way we see the world. They shape our politics, our faith, our fears, our hopes, and our understanding of one another. That is why examining them matters. Not because every inherited belief is wrong. But because unexamined beliefs have a way of shaping the world long after we’ve forgotten where they came from. None of us choose the stories we inherit. But we do have a choice about what we do with them. Perhaps real freedom is not escaping influence altogether, that is impossible. Perhaps real freedom begins when we become aware of it. When we learn to hold our inherited stories up to the light. When we ask where they came from. When we decide, for ourselves, which ones deserve to be carried forward. And which ones should end with us.

This has been on my mind a lot lately, because I’m a mother because one day, my daughters will inherit stories from me. Not only the stories I intentionally tell. They’ll inherit the assumptions I model. The people I choose to empathize with. The questions I encourage. The questions I avoid. The way I speak about history. The way I speak about strangers. The way I respond to people who disagree with me. Whether I realize it or not, I am becoming part of someone else’s inheritance. That realization has changed me. Maybe raising children isn’t about giving them all the answers. Maybe it’s about giving them permission to ask better questions than I did. Because they will inherit a world they didn’t choose.

Just like I did. My hope isn’t that they accept everything I hand them. It’s that they become thoughtful enough to examine it with courage. Curious enough to question it with humility. And compassionate enough to leave the world a little more human than they found it. None of us choose the stories we inherit. But we do choose whether they become the end of the conversation… or the beginning of one.