Narrative in anticlimatic

I heard that humans rationalize the world, and their place in it, with narratives.

We imagine the greater direction of things as an unfolding story, and separately we imagine our lives as they play out as another. We know how we’d like it to go, but it always surprises. One might think this constant disappointment and deviation from expectation would lend pause to the crafting of narratives all together.

But it doesn’t matter.

Even though the narrative seldom plays out the way we imagine, we can always bend the past into another story that’s arguably just as good. All things lead to the next thing, and things in general run a spectrum from good to bad, and by the laws of probabilities it’s only a matter of time until something good happens, and any of the bad before it can be considered necessary narrative sacrifice to advance the plot. Endless story arcs by way of numerical and natural laws.

Are they necessary, I wonder? What other ways are there to create and embody meaning? Are we always the good guys in our stories, or do we sometimes wear “the black hat” in this western? There was a time in my life that I was not a great guy. Maybe some people can maintain wickedness indefinitely, but for me- and likely most average folk with any degree of reflection and empathy- it was very costly. Took me a very long time to recover from.

Or is that just a narrative I’ve built post-hoc?
Are we yet who we used to be?