After Bondi: How the stories we choose to tell shape who we are

There are moments when the story stops us mid-sentence.

The shooting at Bondi Beach is one of them. Not because it’s unimaginable – sadly, we can imagine it – but because it cuts directly into the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

Australia has a long-held narrative. We’re safe. We’re relaxed. We look out for one another. We gather at beaches and shops and public places without fear. We don’t live with this kind of violence as part of the background noise of daily life.

From the regions, it can be tempting to believe we are somehow buffered from moments like this. Geographically removed. Quieter. Safer. Protected by distance and familiarity. But that sense of remove is an illusion. The impacts travel fast. They reach into regional towns, into conversations at school gates and kitchen tables, into the way we hold our kids a little closer or hesitate for a moment longer before heading out. What happens in Bondi is not “over there”. It lands here too.

When something like this happens, it rattles that story. And in the quiet aftermath – between the headlines, the police briefings, the grief – another story rushes in to fill the space.

That story can go a few ways.

It can become one of fear. Of suspicion. Of drawing lines around “us” and “them”. Of asking how this could happen here, as if “here” is somehow exempt from humanity’s messier edges.

Or it can become a story about how we respond.

As people who make our living telling stories, we know how powerful that choice is. The stories we repeat – out loud and in our own heads – don’t just describe who we are. They shape who we become.

Right now, there’s a temptation to harden. To retreat. To see danger everywhere and goodness nowhere. That reaction is understandable. It’s also not the story we want to keep telling.

Stubbornly and deliberately, we believe in a humanity-first lens. Not a naïve one. Not one that ignores harm or avoids accountability. But one that refuses to let a single act of violence define a nation, a place, or the millions of ordinary moments of care that still happen every day.

We’ve seen them already: strangers holding each other. People lining up to give blood. Messages of love written on footpaths and flowers placed where words fail. Quiet courage. Shared grief. Collective care.

These are our stories too.

The danger, in moments like this, is letting shock turn into cynicism. Letting grief turn into division. Letting fear be the loudest narrator in the room.

The alternative – harder, but truer – is choosing to tell a story that says: this was horrific, and it does not erase our capacity for kindness. This hurt deeply, and we will not respond by shrinking our hearts.

We don’t tell stories for a living because we think words fix everything. We do it because stories help us remember who we want to be when things fall apart.

In times like these, the story we tell ourselves matters. About safety. About community. About each other.

May it be one that honours the lives lost. One that holds space for grief. And one that insists, quietly and collectively, that compassion is still our strongest through-line.

That’s the story we’re choosing to tell.

Bel & Peita