Originally written in 2021 and updated for 2025. My understanding of identity and storytelling continues to evolve, and this piece reflects that growth.
“How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative shapes who you are and is a fundamental part of being human.”
— The Atlantic, 2015
That line captures something essential.
We live our lives day by day, but we understand them through the stories we tell—quietly, privately, and in conversation with others.
A psychologist in that same article said, “To have relationships, we’ve all had to tell little pieces of our story.” And she’s right. Every question—Where are you from? What do you do?—is really an invitation: Share a moment of your life with me.
A few years ago, I watched a simple exchange at a mall. A salesperson greeted a woman walking by. One smile led to another. They talked for a moment about where they were from. A shared memory surfaced. In seconds, two strangers became connected.
All because they exchanged small pieces of their story.
We do this all the time. We build relationships by offering small chapters of who we are.
But the deeper truth is this: We also tell stories privately, inside our own minds. And the way we arrange those stories, what we emphasize, what we forget, what we rewrite—shapes how we see ourselves.
For more than twenty years, I’ve told my own story to groups of men at my church. Every time I shared it, it changed. Not the facts, but the meaning. What felt important at thirty wasn’t the same at forty or fifty. My story kept shifting, because I kept shifting.
I’ve watched the same thing happen as others told theirs. The details didn’t always change.
The interpretation did.
Life stories are like books. They have chapters, themes, turning points, and characters who stay or drift away. But unlike novels, we are both the authors and the main character. We choose how to connect the events. We decide what matters.
And our identity grows out of the choices we make in that telling.
Art, music, relationships, losses, quiet moments, heritage, work, faith, these all shape the narrative. Some people touch only a page or two. Others stay for entire chapters. And sometimes the meaning of their presence doesn’t become clear until much later.
There’s a line from an old poem I’ve always carried with me:
“Some people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”
No matter what you believe about why they show up, we decide what they mean.
We choose what we keep. We choose how we make sense of it.
The alternative is to believe identity is fixed—that we are permanently defined by genetics, upbringing, or circumstance. But that doesn’t hold up. People grow. People interpret. People change.
If you doubt that, try this: Tell your life story today. Write it down. Then come back to it in a year. You’ll tell it differently.
And in that difference is proof: Identity is not a script we inherit. It’s a living, evolving narrative, authored by us, shaped by time, and rewritten as we grow.
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