The Narrative You Are

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

“Most people, whether they realize it or not,” says a writer for the New York Times, “carry a continuing narrative in their minds about themselves — who they are, where they came from and where they are going.” And that “narrative” sense of self, she goes on, can help us reconstruct our lives as the pandemic recedes, will assist us as we rebuild a more normal life after the isolation and hardship and heartbreak.

Alongside my thinking about the excellent contemporary research uncovered by the Times writer, I’ve been spending time rummaging around in the writings of a decidedly more ancient source. Augustine’s insights foreshadow our current fascination with stories—whether our own or those of others; whether stories that are fictional or, in the case of memoirs or tell-all news features, poignantly real.

Augustine’s Confessions was in many ways literature without precedent in the ancient world because of this very thing. Others certainly recounted their human experiences, but not with Augustine’s piercing transparency. Augustine, as Rowan Williams tells us, “shows a wholly new concern with childhood experiences” and their determining power to “make” a person’s identity.

For the sage African bishop, memory was more than nostalgia, but a keen dimension in becoming fully himself, owning his own identity.

And that insight, I believe, holds for the very experiences that seem to grind us down, the hurts that would slight us, the neglect that would make us think we don’t matter. So many of the hard things in our lives have to do with voices that would make light of where we’ve been, who we’ve become. Sometimes those we love have agendas for us that have more to do with their blind spots than our flourishing. Even the best families, often without wanting to, manage to hurt those in range. They shame us when we hunger for affection and tenderness. When our defining stories are discounted or discarded as suspect or as a threat, memory helps us reconnect with happenings that shaped and formed our souls, that sustained our nerve, that gave us life.

I spend time reflecting on my own stories because of a hunch that remembering is more than quaintness. It not only represents our personal history, memory also “re-presentizes” what seemed old and done and past. It gives definition where perhaps, due to our getting worn down, there is drift, or where I’ve lost touch with grounding experiences.

Rowan continues with his reflections on Augustine’s rooting around in his past, both its glories and sordid corners, “The light of God can make a story, a continuous reality, out of the chaos of unhappiness, ‘homeless’ wandering, hurt and sin.”

Might remembering prayerfully, calling the past to mind in the presence of a loving and healing divine presence make us more whole, more fully ourselves? I find that keeping a journal to record events both momentous and momentary helps here. I don’t always see the significance of a given moment for its potential to orient me, or sustain me, but flipping back through earlier entries can remind me. As the Times writer stressed from her conversations with researchers, we look back to reclaim our past “by taking the disparate fragments of our lives and assembling them into a coherent whole.” A defining, guiding whole.

Becoming more fully who God has made me to be and who I long to be in my best moments helps me look ahead, too. So I’m pondering my own life, the sorrows and discoveries, the trip-ups and rejoicings, not only to ground me in what’s been, but also to make me more ready, more open in the face of the events and meanings yet to unfold.