October 8, 2019
Majority of people say they have a life story, and their life story is what they tell others when they first meet. However, our life story is only made up of a few select moments in life. In Hannah and Haley’s interview project, they asked Hannah’s high school best friend about his transition to college in England. He mentioned how it was very stressful but it’s good to be under stress sometimes. He also said how it’s amazing to be “meeting so many different people, [to learn about] so many different cultures”. In this moment of their talk, he said how it’s great to be meeting so many different people and that’s one of the good things about moving to another country. But, just before this he couldn’t stop talking about how stressful the entire process was and how lonely he is because there aren’t many other American students. By only sharing how he thinks it’s great to be meeting people, I only shared the highlights of the move. I only picked out the good portion of his story to make it seem like he’s having such a good time. An author by the name of Galen Strawson is able to further support this idea of our life story only being what we choose to share. In his essay “I am not a story”, Strawson quotes several other professionals to help develop his point that humans are not designed to have a life story, except for a few special individuals. In his introductory paragraph, Strawson quotes J. David Velleman, “we invent ourselves… but we really are the characters we invent.” Strawson uses this quote to help prove that we are only what we share. Later on in his essay, Strawson also quotes James Salter, “no complete life… only fragments.” With the use of these quotes, Strawson develops the point that there is no life story, but only puzzle pieces that we make with our own hands to create what most assume to be a life story. Strawson’s use of quotes along with Hannah and Haley’s project demonstrate just what I am proving, that your “life story” is only fragments of the entire list of events, feelings, memories, etc.
By only using specific moments of life, the “life story” can be skewed positively or negatively by what you choose to share with the world. If you only choose to share that your mother died when you were ten and that you were diagnosed with depression at age fourteen, well then it looks like you have a very rough life. But if you forgot to include that when your mother died, your entire family showed up to your house and lived with you for a few months to help fill some of the void, then you chose ignorance. Ignorance meaning there were good things, aka your family.
Fantastic connection! Consider using summary to highlight the main idea instead of a mixture of paraphrase and citation when working with Haley and Hannah’s podcast. This way you can control the information so that it doesn’t overload your reader.