How You See Yourself Changes Over Time

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We tell the story of who we are by arranging the events of our lives into a narrative. The Atlantic once described this idea simply: how you shape the plot points of your life becomes a part of your identity. It is a fundamental part of being human.

Monisha Pasupathi, a developmental psychologist at the University of Utah, put it this way. To have relationships, we have to tell pieces of our story. Every introduction is a story we choose. Where we are from. Where we grew up. The paths that brought us to this moment.

Life stories show up in small places.
I once watched a salesperson greet people at the entrance of a store in a local mall. One woman smiled back, and they walked in together. The salesperson asked where she was from. The woman mentioned a town in California, and immediately they recognized streets and places they had both known. Their conversation deepened. They relaxed. A simple exchange of story created connection.

We see our lives as a series of events. We link those events together, and the story that emerges becomes part of our self-identity. But the story is not fixed. It changes every time we tell it.

For more than twenty years, I shared my life story with a group of men at church. I told it at least twenty times. It was never exactly the same. I added details, left out others, or shifted the meaning of certain moments. Each retelling reflected where I was in life at that time. New experiences changed how I understood the old ones.

I have watched the same thing happen with others. I heard dozens of men tell their stories, and then tell them again years later. The emphasis changed. Their conclusions changed. The way they understood their past changed. Their story grew as they grew.

Life stories are like books. They have characters, themes, turning points, and chapters. We choose what matters and what belongs in the narrative. Over time we shape and reshape these pieces, and the story becomes part of how we understand ourselves.

People play roles in our story too. Some stay for a season. Some for a lifetime. Some appear only briefly but leave an influence that lasts. As we age, the importance of certain people shifts. We see them differently when we look back through the lens of memory.

Books, art, music, heritage, and even the places we lived can become woven into our personal story. They stay with us and help us understand the world and our place in it.

There is an old saying that people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Whether we see this through faith, chance, or circumstance, the idea remains the same. We are shaped by the people and events we encounter.

I believe we have choice in how we put the pieces together. We can decide how to interpret our experiences and what meaning to take from them. We can revisit old moments and see them with new clarity. A better perspective can change the story, and by changing the story, we change ourselves.

Some people argue for a deterministic view of identity. They say we are the product of our genes, our parents, and the circumstances we did not choose. But this view does not tell the whole story.

All you need to do is tell your story today, then tell it again a year from now. You will see it differently. You will understand it differently. And that difference is the proof that we continue to change.

Who we are is not fixed. It is a story we keep rewriting as we grow.

How Other People’s Stories Shape Our Own

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If our life story shapes our identity, then we have to include the lives we witness and the lives we imagine. George R. R. Martin once wrote, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” It feels true. Stories widen the edges of who we are.

Tony Hillerman captured this idea in a different way. Writing about Navajo traditions, he said that everything is connected. The wing of a corn beetle. The drift of sand. The light in a man’s eye as he looks at his reality. All of it part of a larger whole. In that totality, he said, a person finds hozro. A way of walking in harmony. A way of being surrounded by beauty.

When we learn about the human experiences of others, our own experience expands. Their struggles, their moments of clarity, their hopes, their mistakes, and even the stories of their endings. Each one shows us something about the shape of a life.

Authors become the gatekeepers to these lives. They carry their knowledge and pass it forward. They open doors for the rest of us.

Harold Bloom spent his career studying the great writers. In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he argued that Shakespeare’s 22,000-word vocabulary and the depth of his writing reveal a near-complete understanding of humanness. Bloom believed Shakespeare didn’t just portray people. He helped define what it means to be human.

In a 1995 interview, Bloom said we must read Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, and the King James Bible. He believed their value was intellectual and spiritual. Not tied to doctrine. Not tied to institutions. They tell us things we couldn’t know on our own. They strengthen the mind. They make us more alive.

Bloom used the work of these authors to define humanness. Their stories became part of his own story.

Shakespeare’s lines still meet us where we are. A few that stay with me:

• There is nothing good or bad. Only thinking makes it so.

• Hell is empty, and the devils are here.

• Though this may be madness, there is a method in it.

• All that glitters is not gold.

• To thine own self be true. Then you cannot be false to any man.

The meaning of life is bigger than our daily routines. It grows through the lives we read about. Hyenseo Lee’s memoir, The Girl with Seven Names, taught us about courage, survival, and the cost of escape. Her story gives us awareness without requiring us to live the danger ourselves.

Even fiction adds to our understanding. Jack Reacher’s world is nothing like our own, yet the tension and the choices show us something about bravery and moral clarity. Literary critics often say that writing becomes literature when it aims to describe the human condition.

Poetry does this too. Maya Angelou challenged the status quo and wrote about the struggles and triumphs of marginalized people. Her words changed the way many of us see the world.

What we learn from the lives of others becomes part of our own lives. Their stories shape our story. Their experiences deepen our understanding of what it means to be human.

How You See Yourself Changes →

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“How you arrange the plot points of your life into narrative shapes who you are and is a fundamental part of being human.” This is the subtitle of an article titled “Life Stories,” published in the Atlantic Magazine in 2015.

In that exciting article, Monisha Pasupathi, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Utah, offered much insight on this subject. She stated: “To have relationships, we’ve all had to tell little pieces of our story.”

We share our life stories every day. Here are some examples of our greetings with others: "Hi, where are you from?"  "Where did you grow up?" "Which school did you attend?"

Recently, I watched a salesperson standing at the entrance door of a store in a local mall. She made eye contact and smiled as people passed by. A lady passing smiled and said hello back, and they walked into the store together. I was nearby and overheard what happened next. The salesperson greeted the customer, asking where she was from, and got a smile and a reply. She mentioned a town in California where she grew up, and the salesperson replied with enthusiasm, saying that she knew the city well. They talked about the street where they had both spent time growing up. They had plenty of personal experiences in this town to discuss and share. Both women relaxed and enjoyed getting to know and talking with each other.  It was clear they both had made a connection by sharing part of their life story about this town they both knew.

We see our lives as a series of events. We connect the events with a narrative that then becomes a story, our story. The resulting story, which we have mainly constructed, has much to do with our self-identity. 

In the last 20-plus years, I had an opportunity to tell my life story in front of a church group of men at least twenty times. Each time I shared my story, it was always a little different as I added, changed, or withheld specific details or events. It was different each time because I had thought more about the story and had new experiences that changed with time. Yes, I was recalling it differently because I would reflect on events and see them differently. 

In that same time frame, I heard a few dozen men present their life stories and often heard them tell their stories again after a few years. Their stories' emphasis, substance, and even conclusion changed for them, as my own had altered with each new telling.

Life stories are like books. They have plots, themes, timelines, and characters. We choose what is important to us and connect these events in a narrative, shaping and reshaping our self-identity differently over time.

People come and go in our lives, but some become significant and critical vital characters in our story plot as events occur, but then later in life, they seem less important. We look back at the people and events, filtering all we have been through with our memories.

Books and authors also influence us, much like the people in our lives. Art, music, poetry, literature, service, our heritage, and even food can influence us to the point of being part of our life story.

An unknown author's poem suggests, "Some people come into our lives for a reason, some for a season, and some for a lifetime.” Some feel God sends the people that are needed. Others who may come bring challenges and darkness.

I believe we have a choice in putting together the narrative of who we are and who we become. We can pick which events we connect with and what we conclude about them and then weave and reweave them into our story. Finding or choosing a better perspective later in life can make much of a difference.

If we reject the case for being able to reshape who we are, we are left with a deterministic view of our identity. Some who embrace this belief claim that people are wired to be what they are. This view says that since we didn't choose our parents, the time or place where we were born, or our genes, we are programmed by cause and effect, resulting in our current circumstances.

It seems clear that this deterministic view is false. All you must do is tell your story to your family or friend and listen, or even write down, how you see things this year, and then do the same again in a year. Your story will be different.