"My mother has a name for the elaborate, wrongheaded tales we tell ourselves.
She calls them Jack Stories.

"Here's the original: One day, Jack had a flat tire on the side of the road.
(This was before spare tires, cell phones, navigation systems, and AAA.) Jack
saw a farmhouse in the distance and started walking toward it to ask if he could
use the phone to call his son for help. As he got closer to the place, he
started telling himself this story: There will be a man home, and he will be
mean and nasty and maybe even violent. He will answer the door and ask me what
the hell I think I am doing, out in the middle of nowhere, knocking on a
stranger's door. He will assume I am a thief or a louse. He probably won't care
that I have a flat tire. He won't care about his fellow man. He is probably the
kind of guy who kills small animals just for fun. He might even try to beat me
up.

"Just as he is approaching the front door, Jack thinks: This guy is an absolute
menace to society. I would be doing everyone a favor to take him out. Jack raps
his knuckles on the door. Hard. Loudly. A man answers. Jack says, "So! There you
are! You swine, you pig! Well, take this-!" And Jack punches him in the nose.

"Although we usually fall short of punching people, we tell ourselves Jack
Stories all day long without realizing it..."

~ Geneen Roth, excerpted from "News from Geneen," Vol. 2, Issue 6 September 1,
2009.

Geneen Roth is a long-standing mindfulness student who uses mindfulness to
address issues of compulsive eating.

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