The Stories We Tell
What stories do we tell? Stories we tell ourselves and about ourselves, both collectively and individually? Are there any other kinds?
And what are those stories to us? What do they mean?
Are they the records of who we are both collectively and individually?
What are my stories? Are they the personal memories of how something made me feel strongly in a certain way? The memories of the events I’ve witnessed and been involved in? The memories my family has passed down? The memories of what my religion has taught me? The memories of the stories told in my culture? The memories of national stories? Of intellectual stories? Of universal stories?
An interweaving of stories so complex and unique that it is one of a kind? Is that what a personality is? An identity? The unique web of stories that make up each individual? The individual protagonist at the center of this unfathomably intricate web of stories? But stories of self that are also entirely dependent on all the stories of everyone else? Is this how everything refers to everything?
What does it matter if all we are is stories? Does it matter which kinds of stories we tell ourselves and about ourselves? What if the way we tell stories about ourselves changes the way we see ourselves internally and in relation to our perceptions of external reality? What about the narrative structures we use? Where we choose to open and close chapters in our stories? What about the tone of the stories we tell? Are they positive, negative, or neutral? Or a mix of all of them all at once? Is this what the researchers mean by “narrative psychology”? The emerging field that has linked the stories we tell ourselves and about ourselves to changes in our own biology?
If we tell negative stories about ourselves, our telomeres shorten faster than if we tell positive stories?
Does that mean that we are aging faster biologically than chronologically? Shortening our lives?
Or, does it show that our psychology and our biology are linked? Two sides of the same coin? Or, more realistically, two aspects of the unique multifaceted gem that each one of us is?
Psychology is biology. Biology is psychology. The psychological consciousness we have is based on what our physical biology can sense and perceive? And yet, our biology can be altered by our psychology. Inextricably linked. We are complex beings. We are hard to understand, even by our selves. Even through the stories we tell. And the ways we tell them. I don't know.
But these stories are the threads of the ultimate web metaphor that explains each one of us and all of us collectively. The threads that connect us. The threads that are our reality, like an orb weaver spider.
Is that what we mean by the stories we tell ourselves and about ourselves? Are there historical lessons in the stories we tell?