I recently heard on NPR a theory that all we are (our identity) is a narrative. We are a story, that we have created about ourselves. I can see how this might feel like a negative concept. It can seem scary to be nothing more that a story you tell yourself over and over again. I think I am inspired by the idea though. It would suggest that I am in complete control of myself and what I aspire to be.
I think the idea of the "story" can explain all our constructs. When we learn history in school we are really learning the narrative of time that we tell ourselves as a society and that we feel best explains our society.
The reason we can understand abstract concepts like LOVE is because we connect a whole life's catalog of experiences, memories and feelings to the word. We create very complex narratives to explain all sorts of things in our lives and then somehow, we condense them into this gut feeling or image or moment that can be recalled almost instantaneously. That instantaneous recollection becomes meaning, but it's really just a super condensed narrative.
Why am I thinking about all of this at 2:30 in the morning? Well it has something to do with how I don't seem to have the stomach for politics. I think that for me at least, the pace of politics, policy, and advocacy etc. is faster than I can form meaningful stories to justify my involvement.
I am beginning to think for me to satisfy my desire to make the world a better place I should create and export my own narratives. Choosing this path would couple well with my naive optimism that most people out there are just trying to do the best that they can with the information that they have. It would then follow that if I could create a narrative about an issue that was important to me, say as a video or slide-show, I could then help others understand how it was important.
The aspiration to teach and communicate, condense and reformulate, and shape concepts into a pearl of meaning has been a passion of mine for quite some time. But it has not been part of my identity lately.
How do we make our mark on the world? In my personal narrative I will be making a mark somehow, and I just keep rewriting the details.
