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The story of your life, or your
life story, is the narrative you tell in response to such questions
as, “Tell me about yourself and where you come from?” or “Please
introduce yourself to the group and tell them about yourself.” If
you think about the narrative you would tell, three things probably
become obvious.
One thing is that what you say depends on the group of people to
whom you are going to speak. You will most probably not say the same
things to a group of professional colleagues as you would a group of
friends.
The second thing is that what you say is only a small part of what
you can say about yourself. There is always much more to tell to any
one person or group than: time permits; you feel free to say; or to
what they are willing to listen. In the end, most of us never really
tell our whole story - even to ourselves.
This bring us to the third thing about the story we tell. Most of us
never really look at our whole story from beginning to end and all
the pieces in the middle in any one sitting. So we really never pay
attention to what we say about ourselves. We never pay attention to
how and why we have woven our story together the way we do.
Sometimes we don’t even pay attention to what we say to see if it is
really true or just a convenient way of addressing a question we
have been asked.
What needs to be realized is that within any experience we have,
there are the facts and truth of what is about the situation and
then there is the perception we have about the situation or event.
Our perception about those facts and the truth may, or may not, be
accurate. Most of us probably think we perceive the events in our
lives correctly for after all, we are the one experiencing them. The
story we tell about our life is how we weaver our perception of
these events together and the interpretation we give to those
events.
It is probably obvious to all of us that our perceptions of what
happened can change. Our perception is influences by what we see and
don’t see in those facts. As we look at the facts differently, we
can tell a different story. If we get additional information about
an event it can reshape the whole story. For example, the input of
another as to why they acted the way they did at some key point in
our life which is different than the way we always thought they
acted. As such, within any story we tell about our lives, there are
a variety of ways in which to tell that story. The story we tell all
depends on the information we have about the events and whether or
not we pay attention to the information we have. The question is,
“Do we tell our story in a way that empowers us or do we tell it in
a way that does not really sever us - for example, it holds us as a
victim of circumstances.”
Some are of the opinion any story we tell is only the justification
to think and act the way we do. They are of the opinion that if we
would look at our life differently, then we would think and act
differently. There is a truth in this thinking. But when we look at
our life and try to make sense of all the pieces, not just some of
them, there are ways to tell our story where the facts and events in
one’s life fit together better than any other way. Or, they fit
together at least in a more optimum fashion.
What is surprising as you “play” with telling your story and look at
different ways to tell it, you being to see there is an optimum way
all the pieces fit together. Eventually you may find you lose the
freedom to tell your story the way you want to tell it. You may end
up facing some truths you cannot deny about yourself.
One truth you will probably have to face is there is a flow to your.
It is much like a river that flows across a continent to the sea.
There are experiences you will have like the river flowing trough a
desert or a forest. The exact details may have great variation but
the overall experience is rather fixed by the terrain of the
continent. You may even go so far to say that you have a destiny and
there is no free will. Yet such a statement is incorrect for in
actually we have both a
free will and destiny.
However, more often than not, we do not tell our story based on the
facts as we really understand them. Rather we tell our story in a
way that corresponds to what we have been directly, or indirectly,
been told to tell our story. Our society, our religious beliefs, our
family structure and the like all have ways to tell us who we are,
why things happen to us the way they do and what we should think
about them. Some of what we are told is correct. Other times what we
are told is more erroneous than what we could create. Some times we
believe what our external world tells us to believe. At other times
we believe our own experience and perception. In any case, the story
we tell often does not really tell the events of our life as we
experienced and perceived them let alone whether or not we perceived
what happen correctly.
The truth of the matter is we will never always have all that facts
about all the experiences we have in life and why we had any one
particular experience. There are answers but we just don’t have
them. Similarly, we will always have a bias as to how we interpret
the experiences we have.
Telling our story is much like what science found in revealing the
laws of physics. There was a way to explain the understanding that
scientist came to realize about nature that seemed to work well.
Then, in time, as the experience of nature grew, the understand
seemed to no longer work in all situations. Some new and more
expansive explanation was needed to explain the deeper realizations
about nature. Yet, whatever new explanation that was provided needed
to all address all the new information but also the old. Then,
again, as revelation about nature continued, another new and even
deeper understanding was needed. The process continues on and on.
So too with the story we tell of our life. If we explore our life
and why we experience what we do, we will find ourselves tell a
deeper and more expansive story about our life. We can stop the
story at any time. But, in truth, our story is much deeper that our
enculturated mind can fully comprehend. The only question is “How
deep do you wish to go?”
The recommendation made in the creativity perspective is to tell
your story in a way which optimizes the creative power and ability
available to us and/or for what we wish to create. As described in
the
detached witness, it is recommended you tell your story as
seeing yourself as being in a movie where the movie is the life you
are living. Assume you are the writer, director and star performer
and realize that you wrote the script, direct it and are performing
the part critiquing your own performance, directing and writing.
This perspective will help you to become the conscious creator of
the life you are living.
Related topics
Our life and the honey bee
Becoming aware of the story we tell
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