An old and wizened man gathers his small, excruciatingly impressionable grandson into an embrace. He strokes his grandson’s hair. He imparts upon his grandson the lessons he has learned throughout his long, very lesson-heavy life.

‘There is a battle raging within me,’ the old man says. ‘It’s a battle between two wolves.’

‘Nice,’ the grandson answers.

‘One wolf,’ the old man says, ‘is good little guy. He represents joy, kindness, love, and light. The other is a bad little guy. He represents anger, grief, resentment, and sorrow. They fight every day.’

The grandson nods, contemplating the old man’s internal battle. Wolves tumbling over the old man’s spleen, tangled up in his digestive tract. A bile duct exploding. Stomach acid spraying everywhere.

‘Which wolf wins?’ the grandson asks.

The old man smiles, and lets the question hang between them. He is the master of big reveals, of truth bombs, of perfect timing. He pokes his grandson in the belly. ‘Whichever one I feed, my dear boy.’

The “two wolves” story is an example of fakelore. 

This is a word used to describe fabricated cultural practices. “Two wolves” is falsely attributed to Cherokee (or often, vaguely, Native American) culture. The story first made its appearance, however, in 1978’s The Holy Spirit: Activating God’s Power in Your Life, a self help book by evangelical Baptist minister Billy Graham. Graham made the old man Native American, we suppose, for dramatic effect.

The battle of good versus evil, though, is the stuff of Christian parables. The triumph of good over evil — such a boring, insidious dichotomy — is a Western storytelling tradition: it’s in their fairytales, their books, their movies and video games.

Truthfully, there is no battle between a good guy and a bad guy within us. Or if there is, it’s more complex than good versus evil. We contain multitudes, shades of grey, paradoxes. A person can be kind and cruel at the same time. A person can be ambitious and lackadaisical at the same time. They can be generous and frugal. Sad and grateful. Serious and silly.

There are two wolves inside you, and we feed ’em both.