still like to imagine you in their own way. “You’re so stubborn,” “You don’t know how to love,” “You never take risks.”
By now, you’ve formed a solid opinion of yourself, but consider what that opinion is based on. Since you were born, you’ve heard different people describe you many different ways. They each see what they want to see. And you’ve supplemented other people’s stories with stories of your own. When you meet someone, you talk about your life—past events and hopes for the future. You tell the same stories, more or less the same way, featuring yourself as the main character. How did that character come to define you? Let’s first look at how we tell our story, and then we can see how the main character describes itself and drives all our actions.
We are storytelling creatures. Telling a story is a good way to connect to other people. Most of us don’t think of ourselves as weavers of myths, but we never stop telling the story of our lives. We recount the events of each day as they unfold, for anyone who will listen. We tell stories to ourselves, as if to explain what we’ve already experienced. We talk nostalgically about yesterday and speculate about tomorrow. Some stories we tell often, inventing dramatic interpretations and new plot twists. And why not? Telling stories is what humans do.
You probably don’t put faith in fairy tales anymore, but you believe the story of your life. Most of us put a lot of faith in our version of reality. We talk about the events of our lives reverently, describing them in careful detail. We put on a performance for an audience of one, or many. If we stopped to listen to ourselves, we’d also realize how masterfully we play with emotions. If we took the time to write down the story of our lives, highlighting its most important moments, we’d see how easy it is to fall into our own emotional traps. However, if we wrote it all down a second time and a third, those moments would eventually lose their power to move us. We would begin to see just how much we are shaping our story to emphasize the drama.
Even the best stories lose their emotional impact after the first telling. When we’re finally able to disarm the emotional triggers in our own story, we can recall any event without the usual self-pity or self-importance. We can talk about today’s problems and yesterday’s mishaps without the need for sympathy. If we ever read our story out loud, we’d begin to see it all as a work of fiction, a work of art. And we’d realize that even our best stories don’t tell the truth about us. So if that’s the case, then who are we?
As the old man in our little parable suggested, we’d be wise to first take a look at what we are not.
EVER SINCE YOU can remember, you’ve given the main character of your story power to determine your reality. It has the authority to talk, think, and make decisions that affect your body and your world. It tells you what to believe and how to invest your beliefs with emotional energy. You call the main character in your ongoing story me.
Let’s take a minute to understand what the word me means in this context. Me is the person you accept as your real self. You talk about yourself all the time, right? You say me, mine, and myself countless times in the course of an ordinary conversation. Through me, you say things like, “Hey, this is important to me!” or, “Are you listening to me?” or, “What are they saying about me?” Me is everything you believe you are. Me is everything related to the character you forged out of core beliefs and countless experiences.
The word me, or its counterpart in any language, is a simple pronoun—and like every word in the language we speak, it has no meaning until we agree upon a meaning. The difference is that me comes with a lot of baggage: past memories, judgments, and automatic assumptions. We put a lot of faith in our identity and expect it to matter to other people. Who we think we are develops into a mythology. We share the myth of me with old friends and new acquaintances. We tell riveting stories about ourselves. We send photos to back up our stories. We celebrate me in so many ways.
Me always refers to the person speaking, but we don’t give much consideration to who that might be. We say, “Look at me!” indicating that we want attention given to this human being—but also to this thought process, these frustrations, these expectations. We feel sympathy for ourselves, but to the one listening, “Look at me!” could evoke other emotions. Our idea of who we are isn’t everyone’s idea of who we are. It may not be anyone’s idea.
Me doesn’t refer to the body we occupy. Me doesn’t describe the energy that moves through us. Me isn’t a primal thing, because we didn’t invent a “self” until we learned a language. Me didn’t exist until we began to see the world through symbols and their meanings. In short, me doesn’t refer to anything real. It refers to an image, an idea we have of ourselves that we’ve attempted to put into words. Of course, the words we use to describe ourselves change all the time, because we see things differently with every changing situation. Who we think we are has evolved a lot since early childhood, when we first began to talk and think. Who we imagine ourselves to be still changes—with time, with shifting moods, and with the feedback we get from people we care about.
Our impressions change, but we each subscribe to a general myth, or false belief, about ourselves. Me is a personal mythology, a collection of stories that we repeat to ourselves and accept as truth. Like children with their superheroes, we are believers in me. Wrapped in our mythology, we feel confident to take on the world.
Me is not what you actually are. You are life, or the energy that made you a physical being. Life runs through your body and makes it able to move, to love, to feel. Life’s energy created your miraculous brain. It made a thinking mind possible and gave voice to its main character. Life is everything seen and unseen. Only life exists.
There is only life—and infinite points of view. Everything created by life has a point of view, and your body is one. Your mind is one. The human body develops according to its biological programming, but the mind evolves consciously, through attention and deliberate action. The mind is what we think we are, until we decide otherwise. The voice that speaks for the mind is us, until we recognize that it’s not the truth of us at all.
Of all the things we can accomplish as humans, this kind of self-awareness brings the most rewards. It can guide the evolution of the main character. Me responds to your name and knows your history. Me is aware of your physical environment, and me can also become aware of itself.
Personal growth does get complicated when we try to distance ourselves from the character we created. Through me, we describe ourselves and the world. If we claim to be the victim of the voice in our head, we’ll be the victim in all situations. If we deny the power we have to change the voice of me, how can new doors of awareness ever open? How can we live fearlessly within the dream of humanity, where there are more than seven billion me’s—all with opinions of their own and all demanding to be heard?
Reality is everyone’s personal creation, so the same is true of your reality. The judgments in your head are the result of your beliefs and past experiences. If you feel oppressed by your own thoughts, then it’s time to take charge of them. Does me have to be a big judge or a constant victim? No. Most of us want a closer relationship with the truth, and we all want some peace of mind. We want to be healthy, but so often our judgments make us sick. We want to be spiritually aware, but our beliefs keep us spellbound.
If we take the time to listen to what we think and say, we have a chance to be more honest with ourselves. Behavior follows belief, and any belief can be modified. If we challenge our own opinions, we can begin to find our way back to authenticity. Do we always have to be right? Do we really need to have the last word? If our actions do not represent the kind of people we want to be, we can take new paths of action. We can change.
It makes sense