A few weeks ago, I was listening to Terry O’Reilly’s Under the Influence podcast when he interviewed David Sheff, author of Yoko. Curious about Yoko’s story, I downloaded the audiobook, expecting to learn more about Yoko Ono.
What I didn’t expect was to learn something about myself. Like many people, I’d accepted a story I had never questioned.
When John Lennon was killed in 1980, I was twenty-one years old and newly married. I wasn’t a devoted Beatles fan, but I knew what everyone else seemed to know – that Yoko had broken up the group. It was repeated so often that I never stopped to ask whether it was actually true.
As I listened to David Sheff’s account, I found myself feeling something I never expected: sadness.
Not just for Yoko, but for the years she spent carrying the weight of a story that wasn’t hers alone. The book explored the extraordinary discrimination she faced as a woman and as a Japanese artist. It also challenged many of the assumptions that had become accepted as fact, including the long-held belief that she single-handedly ended one of the world’s most beloved bands.
The book wasn’t trying to convince me of anything. It simply encouraged me to look beyond the story I’d always accepted.
That’s when I realized how easily we can inherit someone else’s version of a story without ever examining it for ourselves.
As I reflected on that, I thought of a time in my own life when I accepted someone else’s version of events without ever questioning it.
A friend shared what sounded like a horrific story about someone who had treated her terribly. Wanting to be supportive, I believed every word. After defending my friend in front of others, I later watched the two women talking together and realized there was much more to the story than I’d been told. I was humiliated.
That experience stayed with me.
Not because my friend intentionally misled me, but because it reminded me how easily we can form opinions based on incomplete information. Sometimes we hear one chapter of a story and assume we’ve read the whole book.
It made me wonder how often we do this. Not because we’re careless, but because we’re human.
We trust people. We hear something repeated often enough – or hear it from someone we trust – and it begins to feel like fact. Before long, we’ve formed an opinion about someone we’ve never met, a business we’ve never dealt with, or a situation we haven’t experienced firsthand.
Stories are powerful that way. They don’t just shape what we know – they shape what we believe.
As a copywriter, I’ve spent nearly three decades helping businesses tell their stories. Most people think storytelling is about marketing – creating a message that attracts customers. But storytelling does something much deeper than that. It shapes perception.
The stories we hear influence who we trust, what we believe, and sometimes even who we become. They can build reputations, strengthen relationships, and inspire action. But they can also create misunderstandings that last for decades.
As writers, we understand the power of story. But perhaps we don’t always appreciate what happens when a story is repeated often enough to become accepted as truth.
That’s why curiosity matters – and I believe it’s one of the most valuable qualities we can cultivate.
Curiosity encourages you to pause before deciding you’ve heard the whole story. It reminds you there may be another perspective.
I thought I was reading a book about Yoko Ono. Instead, I was reminded to be more thoughtful about the stories I choose to believe and the ones I choose to pass along.
Whether you’re reading a headline, listening to a friend, meeting a new client, or hearing someone else’s opinion, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question: Who wrote this story?
Because sometimes the most important stories aren’t the ones we’re told. They’re the ones we finally choose to examine for ourselves.
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My thanks to Terry O’Reilly for introducing me to David Sheff through Under the Influence. It led me to a book that challenged more than my perception of Yoko Ono; it reminded me of the extraordinary power every story holds. If you’re curious, I highly recommend listening to their conversation.
