I grew up in a lower middle-class family. As most immigrant stories go, my parents sacrificed their family, friends, and stability from their home country to come to the States so that my sister and I could have a better life. And despite the cultural and language barriers leaving me not as close to them as I’d like, to this day I feel indebted towards my parents for providing me the opportunities I have today.
Here’s a thought experiment – if we had a supercomputer powerful enough, we can recreate any person as an input of all of his or her past experiences. And while the common question is if the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, here I’d argue the opposite is true. That while these experiences are independently rooted in fact, our imperfect “computers” (i.e. our brains) tend to reflect on our past using anecdotes, creating a web of personal narratives that we tell others and ourselves. For example, whenever my friends would ask me the question that given my pedigree in business and computer science, “why don’t you make a startup,” the narrative I tell them is that I value financial security of having a consistent paying job and while I’d genuinely love the chance to disrupt the world, my priority is to my family and making sure their needs are met as they had mine growing up. And one realization of that vision would be to help pay off my parents’ mortgage so they can live comfortably as I do now.
The issue of personal narratives is that while these stories are originally rooted in fact, the telling, and retelling of these stories over time begin to deviate from reality. Whether we tell these narratives to others or ourselves for social validation, to “appear” vulnerable, or because we’ve even fooled ourselves into thinking that’s the life we are forever destined to live, we must avoid the insidious pitfall as our lives and circumstances inevitably change (hopefully for the better), own personal narratives need to change alongside them to truly live genuinely to who we are today, not to who our past self was.
These narratives serve as a crutch. While often a useful crutch in communicating our thoughts to others, holding onto these stories prevents us from learning to truly live vulnerably. For me, this means living in the moment and embracing all the fears and pain current day Jerry faces, which has thankfully long evolved beyond needing to provide financial security for my family. By not questioning these narratives, each time we tell these stories, we become further entrenched in the past, fixated on our past self, and paralyzed in fear on taking true steps forwards to becoming who we want to be.
I get it – we’re all human. Learning to stand up each time we fall down becomes ever more difficult. Living in the past is one that provides comfort in a story we already know the conclusion to. For how neurotic I get about self-improvement, I too ask myself “isn’t this enough? How much more pain do I need to suffer through to get to where I want to be?” And to be crystal clear, I’m not advocating for pushing through this pain and stepping forward blindly as this causes its own issues. But instead, the nuance of noticing when we choose to live in a past version of our lives, our historical narratives, especially during a period of change (e.g. moving to a new city, changing jobs, changing social circles) becomes critical for taking in reality for what it is. Which often comes with stretches of feeling lost with flickers of suffering. But on the flip side, without embracing these lows – you start to forget what the highs really are.
Because instead of ignoring Mara, we should all choose to acknowledge his presence and invite him to tea.
Random Musings 