Why seems it so particular with thee? – Shakespeare
My favorite story is the story of my life.
This is not because my story’s more exciting or I’m sweet on its protagonist. It’s because I know this story better than any other and it matters to me. I am forever retelling my story, exploring its characters, wondering how this led to that. My past brims with surprises, each of which affects the shape of the whole. I wonder why I do what I do, think what I think, say what I say. I chase after myself like a biographer: please, Carll, explain yourself!
The preceding paragraph would have appalled my parents. They taught what they were taught, to never speak of themselves. The adjective “personal” was pejorative. Conversation was confined to neutral topics – the weather, news, social doings; controversy was eschewed. When I first saw Shakespeare, age ten or so, it dumbfounded me how everyone spoke their mind, no obfuscation, evasions, just blurted their feelings. My world was amiable blather by comparison. One said what one ought, not what one thought.
Because you inhabit your story does not mean you know it. Self-awareness takes practice, discipline, and humility. When we’re young, we tend to view our stories as more glamorous and consequential than we do at their close. As a boy I was “full of myself,” a hero in waiting – watch out, world! These days I smile at my old heroics. My achievements seem piffling compared to my dreams.
I’ve often contemplated writing the story of my life but it’s impossible because the story keeps changing. I’ve developed differently than I envisioned – and my twists and turns keep taking me by surprise. I consider my present version an improvement on his proliferant predecessors, though others might dispute that reading. Self-analysis is typically self-defensive: if I do not justify myself, who will?
The bildungsroman – or coming-of-age story – is such a staple of popular fiction it’s surprising to recall the genre is hardly two centuries old. Before Goethe wrote Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship at the turn of the nineteenth century, folks told other kinds of stories – fables, adventure stories, morality tales, love stories, fantasies. The biographies of rulers and saints were propaganda. Poets have spilled their guts since ancient times, but these were intimate communications, akin to prayer. I’m pretty sure Shakespeare did not view his plays as confessional: Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Prospero were characters, not versions of himself. Post-Freud, we realize all expression is self-expression.
Self-awareness has made telling one’s story more complicated. How reliable is our narrator? Am I remembering what happened or what I need to believe happened? Over the years, my dad, a central character in my story, has assumed more shapes than Proteus, from admirable to despicable, depending on my psyche’s requirements. Am I his clone, his destroyer, adversary, advocate, successor? Have I solved the problem he left me with by dying embittered when I was sixteen, or am I still wrestling with his incompletion? Was his influence healthful or baleful? I can retell my story every which way, each true, each false.
Telling one’s story isn’t narcissism. If we’re honest, self-reflection should steer us from self-love. Swaggering is a form of stupidity. Some of us are luckier, but we’re all alike, destined to return to the dust from which we rose. My averageness, startling at first, now consoles. So what I’m not Shakespeare, my best must be good enough.
Accepting one’s story settles us into life. You’re a result, so relax. Whatever happens interests. I can’t wait to see how my tale turns out.