A life story is a running narrative that impacts the present by filtering perceptions, highlighting certain sensory impressions and subordinating others. But a life story does more than influence our perception of the present. A life story also reshapes our memory of the past and our anticipation of the future.
Why we need a life story
We use this running narrative to place any single live event within the flux of an entire lifetime of events. We use it to decide what that individual event means—what it means about who we are, how we relate to others and what life holds in store for us. Without an ongoing narrative, each event would be spliced up and floating, sans context, in a meaningless sea of other bits and pieces.
Life stories come from the left hemisphere
New brain research can now show us (through fMRI scans, stroke victim research and split-brain re-search) that it is the left hemisphere of the brain that is the storyteller. The left hemisphere wants to string things together into a linear pattern, while the right hemisphere tries to observe the whole at once. In other words, our life story considers a distorted portion of our external reality, and is not built around some true representation of “the way things are.”
The way things are
In their 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann argue that all knowledge, including the most basic, taken-for-granted common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions. This theory, later extrapolated as social constructivism, can help us understand socially what brain research shows neurologically. Objective reality is a slippery slope, and what we see, think and feel is a construction of pieces rather than a given whole.
We have to believe it to see it
We have all heard the expression, “I’ll have to see it to believe it.” In large measure, the opposite is true. We have to believe something is possible before we can see its manifestation in the world around us. As Paul Simon said, “A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.” This is a literal description of how our eyes see. Our eyes take in sensory impressions, but from perceiving to seeing, the information our eyes relay is translated into “mental inventions.” The neurons in our brains respond to these mental inventions, and only after this translation has occurred does the image become conscious. Our underlying beliefs about what we’re seeing, based upon our interpretations of past experience, factor into the mental invention stage of seeing before we are even conscious that we are seeing anything at all. Basically, we don’t get a conscious say in what we decide to see. Vision is automatic, yes, but it’s also constructed—each and every glimpse.
Do you see the smiley face in the photo of the moon and stars or in the plant photo at the beginning of this post? Your ability to form mental categories is what allows you to think of it as a smiley face. In the same way you see a smiley face when there is no face at all, you also see representations of bits of your life story everywhere you go and in every interaction you have.
The life story’s greatest gift
A life story bestows a hugely important gift on each of us. It gives us a sense of self. We use our running narratives to perceive things as happening to a single consciousness. No story line, no sense of self. But stories of all kinds are by nature limiting. By placing a frame around our perceptions, they keep some in and others out. That’s why careful examination of the tone, themes, and buried beliefs in our life stories has rare value. I teach a life stories class for the University of Utah’s Lifelong Learning program that steps participants through this discovery process and would like to open up a similar online exploration. If you are interested in meeting with an group to explore your life story, please feel free to contact me at Sharon@newinkcopy.com.
Why we need a life story
We use this running narrative to place any single live event within the flux of an entire lifetime of events. We use it to decide what that individual event means—what it means about who we are, how we relate to others and what life holds in store for us. Without an ongoing narrative, each event would be spliced up and floating, sans context, in a meaningless sea of other bits and pieces.
Life stories come from the left hemisphere
New brain research can now show us (through fMRI scans, stroke victim research and split-brain re-search) that it is the left hemisphere of the brain that is the storyteller. The left hemisphere wants to string things together into a linear pattern, while the right hemisphere tries to observe the whole at once. In other words, our life story considers a distorted portion of our external reality, and is not built around some true representation of “the way things are.”
The way things are
In their 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann argue that all knowledge, including the most basic, taken-for-granted common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions. This theory, later extrapolated as social constructivism, can help us understand socially what brain research shows neurologically. Objective reality is a slippery slope, and what we see, think and feel is a construction of pieces rather than a given whole.
We have to believe it to see it
We have all heard the expression, “I’ll have to see it to believe it.” In large measure, the opposite is true. We have to believe something is possible before we can see its manifestation in the world around us. As Paul Simon said, “A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.” This is a literal description of how our eyes see. Our eyes take in sensory impressions, but from perceiving to seeing, the information our eyes relay is translated into “mental inventions.” The neurons in our brains respond to these mental inventions, and only after this translation has occurred does the image become conscious. Our underlying beliefs about what we’re seeing, based upon our interpretations of past experience, factor into the mental invention stage of seeing before we are even conscious that we are seeing anything at all. Basically, we don’t get a conscious say in what we decide to see. Vision is automatic, yes, but it’s also constructed—each and every glimpse.
Do you see the smiley face in the photo of the moon and stars or in the plant photo at the beginning of this post? Your ability to form mental categories is what allows you to think of it as a smiley face. In the same way you see a smiley face when there is no face at all, you also see representations of bits of your life story everywhere you go and in every interaction you have.The life story’s greatest gift
A life story bestows a hugely important gift on each of us. It gives us a sense of self. We use our running narratives to perceive things as happening to a single consciousness. No story line, no sense of self. But stories of all kinds are by nature limiting. By placing a frame around our perceptions, they keep some in and others out. That’s why careful examination of the tone, themes, and buried beliefs in our life stories has rare value. I teach a life stories class for the University of Utah’s Lifelong Learning program that steps participants through this discovery process and would like to open up a similar online exploration. If you are interested in meeting with an group to explore your life story, please feel free to contact me at Sharon@newinkcopy.com.
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