While reading Julie Beck’s essay “Life Stories”, her statement “In telling the story of how you became who you are, and of who you’re on your way to becoming, the story itself becomes a part of who you are” stood out to me. It made me realize that your life story is essentially your identity which has been created through all your experiences in life and how you interpret them. Life stories encompass everything that you are and include all aspects of your being. Another moment within Beck’s essay that stood out to me is when she noted that “storytelling, then-fictional or nonfictional, realistic or embellished with dragons-is a way of making sense of the world around us.” In other words, life stories put sense into life which before reading this, I never really considered. I do use past experiences to make sense of and navigate a new one, though I never thought of how that relates to my life story, which I understand does. What I have experienced throughout my life influences my story and it is those experiences that I place into context in order to make sense of the unknown.
Though there was one point where I partially disagreed with what Beck was saying. She mentions that “the way people recount experiences to others seems to shape the way they end up remembering those vents…One is that people tailor stories they tell to their audiences and the context.” Personally, I believe that this means that you are fabricating your life story in order to make think you are someone they envision. This connects back to Galen Strawson’s point in his essay “I am not a Story” about how life stories are only made up of fragments of your life, resulting in it to be inauthentic because it does not include its entirety and the truths behind the experiences.
You picked up on some interesting moments. I was struck by the comment you made beside the bit on master narratives. Combine this comment with your reflection on how telling our story “wrong” might create a false self, and you begin to build some momentum!