We are the sum of all our stories, even those we don’t author ourselves
Our family, our neighbors, our friends, our community influence us through stories. So who are we?
Our lives are defined through collective stories that include the beliefs and actions of our parents, family, neighbors, and community. They directly influence who we are and how we live. And these stories often protect our worldview and loved ones.
No matter how constructive or destructive, stories give our lives meaning. They may have originated in our cultural background, religions, belief systems like the Law of Attraction, or political outlooks. Or they may be based on philosophies like existentialism, nihilism, or those that shaped the enlightenment era. These stories aren’t distant thoughts you find in textbooks; they are cultural influences that guide us to become who we are, consciously or subconsciously.
If we reflect on our lives as we know them, the stories we tell ourselves about our childhood often originate from stories that other people, like our parents and relatives, share with us. In a way, those aren’t our stories but their stories about us. We are the subject. Unless we remember the incident in the story through our own point of view, there are few stories about our childhoods that we create on our own. Our stories are often borrowed from others sharing who they believe we are. Such a thought should make us wonder if our identity is part of a borrowed experience that isn’t ours alone.
Knowing that most of the stories we hear about ourselves or that influence our lives are not our own, it becomes clear that we aren’t free-thinking individuals with original thoughts. We are communal beings that hold shared, common beliefs and experiences that shape our identity. We have minimal control over our lives. We may believe we can manage and change our thoughts to uphold a new ideal. And to a degree, we can. We can control our reactions to what others say or do to us. However, we can’t completely stop the influence others have had on us throughout our lives. We can only choose to accept or reject those influences. And if we choose to reject any influence, that in itself is a reaction. In a way, reactions to influences are choices made among options we immediately recognize. Infinite options and solutions to problems exist, but our belief system may limit the possibilities we see. In the end, we rarely decide to take action in an original direction without some type of influence sparking a reaction.
You could say that stories shape our identities like chemical reactions, but instead of creating a new substance, stories forge us anew when we accept or reject ideas.
I originally wrote drafts of this essay using personal stories to introduce how we influence each other in all our decisions.
In one story, I was fortunate to have a second chance to work with the same people I did twenty years ago. At that time, I naively believed that leaders got power because they were skilled and knew what they were doing. I had respect for them. And although I followed their lead and direction, I simultaneously held the belief that I had complete control over all parts of my life. Anything that happened was my fault. At the time, these leaders made some poor decisions, and although I tried to influence them to make different choices, they didn’t listen. I was too junior and considered to be too inexperienced. However, I still felt responsible for the impact that their flawed decisions had on me and blamed myself for the resulting calamities. For decades afterward, I considered that episode of my life a failure.
After twenty years had passed and I worked with them this second time, I observed similar calamities. I then realized that these situations weren’t my fault at all. Over those years, I shifted my understanding of leadership, accountability, and responsibility. I realized that there was no way for me to stop these leaders from making poor choices. Instead, I protected myself from such outcomes by setting appropriate boundaries and clarifying where their accountability ended and my accountability began. This changed story, this shifted perspective, reframed my understanding of what happened twenty years ago. I now had two different stories about the same events only because I changed my story about leadership.
In the second story, I relied on the Law of Attraction to turn around my job search. Upon reflection, the Law of Attraction didn’t really help me find work. But it did help me see that the process of finding a job is well beyond any single person’s control. Hiring managers choose you. Although you can influence them through your resume, experience, and network, you can’t make someone like you or hire you. During that job hunt, dozens of people reviewed my resume at dozens of companies. At one point, I wondered how I could not be a fit anywhere at all. That didn’t make logical sense. And considering the “spiritual” aspect, would a spiritual guide want anyone to be completely broke, even if it was for a personal “lesson”? I highly doubted that, too. I eventually found work and the company that hired me saw my worth and compensated me appropriately. But I don’t think the Law of Attraction made that situation possible.
Although I clung to the Law of Attraction story at the time to make sense of my situation and keep my sanity, I was in a position where I controlled virtually nothing about my life. Prayers and positive thinking helped me believe there may be a purpose for the chaos, providing an illusion of control as I tried to make meaningful sense of a calamity.
In both stories, I believed I had personal power and could manage all aspects of my life through hypervigilance, controlled responses, or prayer. We sometimes see prayer as an approach to accept a situation or somehow will it to change. We hope that a higher power would respond to provide what we desire or, minimally, respond with easily noticeable, “better” options. I believed that if I prayed hard enough and had a strong enough will, I could somehow change my life and feel less victimized and powerless.
When I reflect on both of those times, I realize that my actions and beliefs were a response to other people’s views of me. In one case, the leaders thought that I was inexperienced and they were “more knowledgeable.” And in response to their seniority, I thought that they were right and I was somehow wrong, no matter what. In the other case, I responded to the silence of the hiring managers by interpreting it to mean that they didn’t see my value, but who knows if that is true. I either accepted and internalized such views and actions as my story or reacted to them through my actions, hypervigilance, or prayer to create a response story. I subconsciously knew that I had no control over the situations; I was at the mercy of others and their feelings, real or perceived.
Many of us define meaning and alter our life based on the influences of those around us. And those influences are often based on worldviews that others consciously or subconsciously adopt in response to a broader set of people’s stories about their own lives, the lives of others, or the world. Rather than describing an individualistic society, such a structure shows us that we are communal beings, influencing each other through stories. We define who we are by responding to stories that our families, friends, and community share again and again. The tales could be cultural or personal, but often we are the subject rather than the author. In the end, we accept or reject these tales to create our identity, which is who we believe we are. We are a collection of stories, our own and those owned by others. We are the subject and object at the same time.
