Several years ago, while shopping in a Baltimore consignment store, I caught an elegant saleswoman staring at me as I held up a pair of earrings against my face in the mirror. "Well, aren't you the star of your own story?" she said, with a knowing gaze. Initially, the comment unsettled me and made me self-conscious.
Today, what really strikes me was how perceptive the saleswoman had been. She was right. I did consider myself the star of my own story. But doesn't everyone, I mean, if we're really honest about it? After all, how many of us have daydreamed about writing the great American novel or experienced moments that felt like scenes from a movie?
Sigmund Freud distinguished between healthy and unhealthy narcissism. Starring in our personal narratives is only narcissistic if the titles of our stories are "Me, Me, and Only Mine." But what if the title of your novel is "Serving Humanity" or "Family Comes First?" Mohandas Ghandi wrote an autobiography called, "The Story of My Experiments with Truth" and Nelson Mandela called his "A Walk to Freedom." Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa starred in numerous biographies written about them. They were the stars of their stories, but their storylines were about living for causes larger than themselves.
Research suggests that our brains are wired to process information in narrative form. Think about it - we tell stories all the time - about how we spent our day, funny things that happened, and issues that are bothering us. We often frame our stories in terms of supporting characters - spouses, parents, children, friends, colleagues, to name a few - and adversarial ones - the disapproving mother-in-law, the psychotic, power-hungry boss, or the crazy ex-boyfriend. We classify our lives as chapters, which we call "the good old days," "hard times," "getting married," and "raising children." We get frustrated by sudden plot twists, excited by climaxes like weddings and falling in love, and disheartened by tragedies.
The whole social media revolution is predicated on people's desire to tell their stories in moment-to-moment sound-bites and more explicative narratives. In an era of blogging, Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, I can now follow the daily chronicles of my childhood friends and long lost relatives, or enjoy the chapter-by-chapter unfolding of my friend's sojourn into single fatherhood on his "Diaper Chronicles" blog.
Despite our predilections as natural storytellers, few of us actually take time to step out of our stories and figure out what they're about, who is writing our script, why we've selected our chosen roles, or how the challenges that we face can help us develop the strengths we need to move to the next chapter.
Why is this so? One reason is that it's very difficult to be objective about our own stories. This simple fact keeps the mental health profession in business. As a practicing psychotherapist, I've noticed that people call me when they're stuck in old storylines that no longer serve them. Tired of telling themselves the same self-defeating story over and over, they seek in me an objective listener who can read between the lines of the scripts in their heads and help them restructure their narratives in ways that are powerful and meaningful.
Another reason is that many people are afraid to question their storylines for fear that they might not like what they find. But this might be more a problem of over-valuing materialist achievements and undervaluing the subtle but substantive personal victories that build character - facing a fear, changing an attitude, or kicking a bad habit.
When was the last time you bumped into a friend who announced, "Great news! Yesterday, I conquered my need for my boss' approval and today I didn't scream at my son when he accidentally spilled milk all over the floor!"? Sure, our intimates may be privy to this information. But with so much pressure in society to "have it all together," many people don't realize that their lives can be works in progress and still be masterpieces.
Fill in the blank: If my life was a novel, the current chapter would be called ______________and would be about__________________.
