In a month of posting, day 8
Jan. 2nd, 2015 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexI started this project a month ago, Dec 2nd, so a moment to reflect. I managed seven posts within the month and each one had some value. Some generated good discussion, some hit good chords with some people. If there's any consistent value to them, I think it's in what they made me think about. I'm still uncertain where I'm going with this and unwilling to try and force it into a shape. Let it grow organically.
Tell better stories about yourself.
Once upon a girlfriend ago, she remarked that the stories I told about myself weren't particularly good ones. They tended to highlight faults or flaws and I didn't end up well in many of them. She asked if I had any better stories to tell, where by "better" she meant stories that reflected on my better qualities. Of course I have such stories and I began to practice telling them. Now, more than 20 years later, these better stories are really the only ones I tell.
That's interesting. It means there are some stories I will likely never tell again. Some stories I'd intended to tell I may take to my grave untold. Is that fair? Am I lying by painting a one-sided picture of myself? In my stories I'm funny, perceptive, helpful, clever. Those are all true things about me but they're obviously not all the things about me. Is an edited (curated?) picture a true picture?
I think about this sometimes when I'm editing my photo shoots. If I crop someone out of a picture am I creating a lie by saying that person wasn't there? If I delete the only photo I have of someone at an event am I making a hole in reality?
I also have to bear in mind that we now understand memory is not a fixed thing - every time we remember we re-create and rewrite our memories. That's just a fact about how human brains work but it implies that we're always rewriting our memories with our present sensibilities. Was I actually the funny, perceptive, clever, helpful person in those stories or is that just the way I've rewritten them in my mind?
I know I get facts wrong in some of my stories - I've been able to check myself against independent sources and sometimes it's clear that I've got something wrong. For example, I remember that I first started using Napster in 2000 because Julie Kramer - at the time a radio DJ at WFNX - wouldn't play a particular song I called in to request. Usually she did play what I requested, so the time she refused stuck in my head. My coworkers then were all big into Napster and when they heard me complaining they told me how to find the song through the software so I could listen to it. I used to tell the story as being about one particular song until I found out that song wasn't released until 2001. Nowadays I'm pretty sure the song was the Hersh/Stipe duet "Your Ghost" but I've no idea if that's what it really was or if that's just how I've rewritten my memory to be consistent.
It will probably surprise few of you that one of my favorite movies is Rashomon, Kurosawa's masterpiece in which several characters tell their own (self-serving) versions of events all witnessed or were part of.
OK, so that's a thing, but it begs the question - does it matter? If I get trivial facts wrong in the story is that a big deal? Does it matter what the details are so much as what the story says about me and the other people in it? Am I still telling better stories about myself?
And I wonder, dear readers, if you hear me still telling bad stories about myself.
Tell better stories about yourself.
Once upon a girlfriend ago, she remarked that the stories I told about myself weren't particularly good ones. They tended to highlight faults or flaws and I didn't end up well in many of them. She asked if I had any better stories to tell, where by "better" she meant stories that reflected on my better qualities. Of course I have such stories and I began to practice telling them. Now, more than 20 years later, these better stories are really the only ones I tell.
That's interesting. It means there are some stories I will likely never tell again. Some stories I'd intended to tell I may take to my grave untold. Is that fair? Am I lying by painting a one-sided picture of myself? In my stories I'm funny, perceptive, helpful, clever. Those are all true things about me but they're obviously not all the things about me. Is an edited (curated?) picture a true picture?
I think about this sometimes when I'm editing my photo shoots. If I crop someone out of a picture am I creating a lie by saying that person wasn't there? If I delete the only photo I have of someone at an event am I making a hole in reality?
I also have to bear in mind that we now understand memory is not a fixed thing - every time we remember we re-create and rewrite our memories. That's just a fact about how human brains work but it implies that we're always rewriting our memories with our present sensibilities. Was I actually the funny, perceptive, clever, helpful person in those stories or is that just the way I've rewritten them in my mind?
I know I get facts wrong in some of my stories - I've been able to check myself against independent sources and sometimes it's clear that I've got something wrong. For example, I remember that I first started using Napster in 2000 because Julie Kramer - at the time a radio DJ at WFNX - wouldn't play a particular song I called in to request. Usually she did play what I requested, so the time she refused stuck in my head. My coworkers then were all big into Napster and when they heard me complaining they told me how to find the song through the software so I could listen to it. I used to tell the story as being about one particular song until I found out that song wasn't released until 2001. Nowadays I'm pretty sure the song was the Hersh/Stipe duet "Your Ghost" but I've no idea if that's what it really was or if that's just how I've rewritten my memory to be consistent.
It will probably surprise few of you that one of my favorite movies is Rashomon, Kurosawa's masterpiece in which several characters tell their own (self-serving) versions of events all witnessed or were part of.
OK, so that's a thing, but it begs the question - does it matter? If I get trivial facts wrong in the story is that a big deal? Does it matter what the details are so much as what the story says about me and the other people in it? Am I still telling better stories about myself?
And I wonder, dear readers, if you hear me still telling bad stories about myself.
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no subject
Date: 2015-01-02 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-03 01:04 pm (UTC)And the answer that I believe atm to your question of whether it matters? I believe that it totally does matter in that our memories and our self-views dictate how our lives will go. Not just how we see our lives, but how they will go. What work we do, what jobs we seek, which partners we choose and which ones we never approach. Sure, stuff happens that we could not have foreseen or controlled; crops fail and gas prices skyrocket. But how we view these events and how we deal with them, and what we choose to learn? And possibly even more significant: how we view and learn from our inevitable mistakes. That's up to us.
The question as to whether this will make us happy in the end? That's another question entirely. And I have to agree with Abraham Lincoln. We decide how we feel. To let anything else do this for us is a disservice to ourselves and the people in our lives.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-03 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-05 09:15 pm (UTC)I think the way we talk about ourselves does shape how we feel about ourselves. Sometimes it's obvious, like saying "I'm so fat" all the time, and sometimes it's more subtle with sarcastic self-deprecation, or feeling the need to be the clown/fool in order to be accepted.
I've certainly found that the way I think about my mental health issues affects how I react when I'm struggling. With ADHD, I tend to accept that that's just how my brain works, and it's frustrating, but I don't internalize the blame. With anxiety or depression, I feel like "why I haven't I fixed this about myself? Why does my brain keep doing this?" and I get angry with myself and spiral even worse. But that definitely relates to how I talk about it. ADHD things are just "how I am" whereas the depression is somehow a thing that happens To Me.... and to a degree that's true, but I don't think that attitude is helping me manage it, at least not right now.
Finally, I'd also say that this can be a double-edged sword. I realised in college that others didn't like to hear about my sadness, so I just built a better mask to work from. I could look happy and project happy and tell nice stories about myself, but I didn't "believe" any of it, and I "knew" it was all a lie. The "fake it til it's real" concept just made it feel more fake, internally, and less possible, as time went on. I've worked on correcting that, and I mostly have, but sometimes it comes back.
Anyway. Lots to think about here, for sure.