I'm the comic foil of my own personal narrative

Every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating a treatment of our own life — and the way in which we visualize each scene not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave, new studies find. By better understanding how life stories are built, this work suggests, people may be able to alter their own narrative, in small ways and perhaps large ones.

-- "This Is Your Life (And How You Tell It)," NYT, May 22, 07

When I read this piece, my first thought was that there was a squandered opportunity here to recast the story as "Better Living Through Scrapbooking." After all, if you're choosing to document your life via that crafty outlet, wouldn't how you composed it affect how you viewed your present and future prospects? And couldn't your deliberate narrative construction ultimately affect how you remembered the story?

(And on a tangential note: y'all, Martha Stewart's new crafty stuff makes me want to throw a monkey-themed shindig. I see Pie Fight Club: Battle Banana Creme in my future.)

Anyway, the article got me thinking about how I spin my own narratives, and what story-telling styles feel more natural to me. (Hint: those styles tend to involve either self-directed jokes or snotty asides.) Anyway, the link between personal narrative styles and future behavior is only now being unearthed. Go read this story.

Comments

[drunken monkey]

Oh my, monkey party. Awesome! Will Martha ship to Canada?

I have nothing intelligent to say about this yet, but I will go read that article.

[drunken monkey]

"YouTube routines notwithstanding, most people do not begin to see themselves in the midst of a tale with a beginning, middle and eventual end until they are teenagers."

I wonder if things like Facebook or MySpace will eventually change this -- or if they already have to some degree -- as younger and younger children do things like post photos into albums (stories), create an online profile, engage in online games, get the chance to tell people who they are through new mediums. If you begin structuring your life for others as a narrative earlier, maybe you'll begin thinking of it that way earlier too.

[Jennifer]

I'm so bringing this article to my shrink. She will love it.