We tell stories about ourselves all the time. Sometimes we tell stories about ourselves to other people. Sometimes we tell stories about ourselves to ourselves. In either case, our stories say something about who we are, who we would like to be, and how we would like to be seen. Our life stories are ways of building, presenting, and confirming the identities that have given us meaning and direction in life.
Life stories can range from the dramatic to the ordinary. We might tell a high-stakes story about a time we took a gallant risk for a noble cause, such as rescuing a drowning child from an ocean tide or pulling someone out of a burning building. Or we might tell a more everyday tale about a hard day at the office or a shopping coup while bargain hunting. We might recount a lengthy saga of suffering, struggle, and triumph. Or we might share a brief account of an enjoyable trip we took on vacation. In each case, though, the story will tell us, and others, something about ourselves.
When we tell our life stories, we usually are not aware of their identity-presenting agenda. Other goals that coexist with self-presentation seem more obvious to us. The stories we tell others may be intended to entertain, to amuse, to influence, or even possibly to deceive. The stories we tell ourselves may be intended to remind us about incidents we’ve treasured and now enjoy reliving, or to help us rethink events we have found disturbing in the past and now wish to resolve in our present thoughts. But along with these other goals, whether intended or not, any story we tell about ourselves conveys information about who we are and who we want to be.
Depending on how committed we are to honesty—and how good our memories are—our stories vary widely in their accuracy. Rarely are we able to tell a story that’s “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” We are selective in the events and details that we choose to convey, and we don’t always get those events and details exactly right. The inaccuracies in our life stories occur not necessarily because we are trying to deceive ourselves or others (although sometimes people do that), but more commonly because our information is incomplete. We may not know all the facts about an incident we are trying to recall, we may have memory lapses, or we may have false memories that include imaginary embellishments. Life stories are not complete accounts of what happened on any given occasion. Our life stories are incomplete in other ways as well. If it’s an ongoing story (as are most life stories, other than deathbed confessions), we can’t know how it will end.
Whatever we perceive to be the reasons for our stories, and whatever degree of accuracy we may achieve, our storytelling continues as long as we remain alive. Each day offers us new opportunities to revisit our understanding of who we are and to forge stronger, more authentic, and more life-affirming identities. The life stories that we tell ourselves permit us to do this—especially if we go about telling them in an intentional way.
Life stories enable us to make sense of events that seem meaningless or dispiriting if just left alone to fester. They help us salvage benefits from our regrets. One saving grace of the human condition is our capacity to find meaning in life’s most painful occurrences. Stories that place regrettable incidents in the context of what we have learned from them can help us do this.
A thoughtful story can help us find meaning in events that otherwise may seem random or disconnected. It can weave our life events into a coherent narrative about who we’ve been and who we hope to become. It can help us connect the past with the present and prepare us for the future we’d like to have. In this way, stories about who we’ve been and who we are can help us deal with the inevitable challenges life throws at us. They give us agency in determining who we shall become. Storytelling is a fundamental human capacity, and life stories are a prime way that humans bring coherence and positivity to their life experiences. Any life story, whether lengthy or brief, offers us a chance to review some portion of our lives and, with that, a chance to reflect on who we are.
Take, for example, our sense of how we’ve acted in important relationships. For most of us, relations with parents play a large role in our life stories. We would like to think of ourselves as good children who have been loved by our parents, who have made our parents proud, who have expressed gratitude for whatever our parents have given us, and who have always been there for our parents until the very end. This ideal, however, is rarely achieved.
It is common, for example, to feel we should have devoted more time to a sick or dying parent, no matter how much we manage to do. People with dying parents tend to be in midlife, with many competing responsibilities, such as jobs, families, and community engagements. It is hard be in more than one place at once, so we may feel forced to balance obligations. Although we have tried to do our best for our parents, looking back often uncovers a residue of guilt: Could I have stayed at my mother’s bedside longer? Should I have said things to her, or done things for her, that I never quite got around to? As unjustified or irrational as such feelings may be, they can leave a legacy of distress and doubt. A new narrative account of the whole relationship over time can trigger a process of reflective review that resolves such feelings by recasting them in a more forgiving light.
