Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog

And finally, my “Overall Life Theme”. 

If I’m right, then the big idea McAdams was making by this summary point, and other writers with variations on the same idea, is that we all have a story that we live by, a sense of our coherent selves (however constructed). More than just recounting, our narratives are an organising principle for our concept of self and of others, (synonymous, in fact, with human experience). They are our filter for what we take from past experience, what we expect, anticipate or hope for the future and how we conduct our relations with the world and with ourselves in the here and now.

Looking back not just across these posts, but just generally looking back, the “central theme, theme, message, or idea” I have for my life and, therefore, the clue to my identity boils down (distils?) into one thing:

Seeking to create an ebb and flow between myself and the world

Hope that doesn’t sound pretentious. On the other hand, who cares? It’s how I feel. I do feel a tension between the inside world and the outside world, and I do feel an intermittent creativity in my relationship with the myriad ways that we communicate with each other.

Well, at any rate, I will now give myself a few days to let that sink in. I will post one or two final reflections, or even meta=reflections before the month and this experiment is closed.

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A couple of further thoughts in transit…

1. I find, for me at least, that although I know I lived my whole life fully conscious of all its present moments (that is, with one exception – in Israel – of a few hours amnesia following a fall and head injury on a country hike), there are a select number of key moments, or even episodes, which remain crystal clear when called to mind, or which some strong trigger invokes with the same immediate crystal clarity. On the other hand, some things are inaccessible to my memory, even when others tell me about them from their perspective. I find myself trying very hard to remember the thing they are describing, and failing, though the temptation to make it up from the other fragments which must have surrounded it. But those moments, memories, are gone.

2. The concept of narrative as I have referred to it several times by me over the past four weeks (i.e. our stories emerge in the present, but only in relation to the past and future) might seem to bear some direct relation to the narrative structure of “a beginning, a middle and an ending”. I’m not sure this is the case, though.