@philosophyminis: There are two stories. The first is a story that we and others tell about how we should live our lives. And the second is the story about how our life is actually lived. And so much disappointment and upset is caused by the mismatch between the two. In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with Martin Shaw about his new book, Liturgies of the Wild. Shaw argues that we often throw away our stories because we are ashamed of them. Our stories do not match the cookie cutter model of social media, or the epic of a Hollywood biopic. And so we throw them away. This is how Shaw put it. ‘People sometimes say, well, you’ve had an absolutely extraordinary life, and I can’t believe half the things you say. And I said, well, they’re all they’re all true. They all happened. The sad thing is, they probably happened to you too. You just weren’t paying attention. You know, most of us are not going to be 16 wrestling with a lion out on out in the desert somewhere and coming back to a village that understands and celebrates that experience. A lot of what Liturgies of the Wild is about is collecting up your thrown away stories, rather than being hypnotised by how Instagram is telling you how to live, or social media, which has you in a kind of trance state, a seduction. Most of the time I’m interested in stories that don’t seduce but actually catch you.’ For Shaw, the question isn’t whether your life contains extraordinary moments. It does. Of course it does. It contains enough to fill a hundred books. The question is whether we are too busy obsessing over somebody else’s story to enjoy our own.

Jonny Thomson

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Wednesday 25 February 2026 15:08:49 GMT