One of our final stops on the road trip my family and I took a few years ago was the Boot Hill Museum in Kansas. Anyone nostalgic for the Old West will find a lot to enjoy there, but while going through old pictures, I found myself stopping on this one. I mean… that’s an epitaph! You look at it and you can’t help but wonder: What exactly happened? And then as you wonder about that story, you can’t help but think, “What about the other gravestones?” Even those without such an unusual inscription still have stories behind them. And even more so… what about the story that preceded the headstone?

In what kind of story was that person, now buried, the protagonist? An adventurer trying to leave his mark and make his way in the brave new world of the west? Was it a criminal–an antihero pushed too far? Or a villain who was proud of his misdeeds? Or was it a hero whose life ended in a final act of bravery?

Or even all of the above? Each one of us plays so many parts in some way, big or small, all throughout our lives.

So what was the story? And even more importantly, what is the story we’re telling, ourselves, right now?

As the 11th Doctor said in Doctor Who: “We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”