I have been a bit obsessed with stories and narratives lately, particularly my own. I usually have a whole spiel to introduce myself to someone new, a date or even a potential employer. I tweak it based on the audience but the general essence is the same.
It goes something like this —
I was born in Bangladesh, a developing country in Asia with Islam being the primary religion. This plays a big part in my story. My taste in food is particularly well-tuned to the Asian spices and the household staples. Bangladesh isn't particularly well known for anything. However, I did feel a lot of pride whenever I would see us do particularly well in cricket or see a fellow Bengali be a global influencer and bring about a positive change.
When I was young, we had regular power outages during the summer. My family and I would sit on the balcony to get relief from whatever little breeze was blowing and wait till the lights came back on again. This was a very common occurrence. This led me to become more interested in the science behind energy generation.
I have always had a knack for science. As a youngster, I had my own “lab” where I mixed coloured solutions and appreciated how the colours would change. I saw myself becoming a scientist growing up without ever realising what that meant. Over the years my interests pivoted a bit and I moved to Physics and then to electrical engineering. I was lucky enough to study abroad in Australia and I told myself that I would come back and give back by working in the energy industry. Conditions in Bangladesh have improved considerably since those candle-lit nights on the balcony, we no longer have major power outages. Similarly, I too have changed, I have pivoted again and moved to renewable energy systems seeing that as serving a higher purpose, much bigger than the energy crisis of a single country. Come graduation time, I realized how hard it was to land a dream job. I had to settle for consulting and am currently working my way towards the energy industry.
This was only a short snippet of my story. Most if not all of the points in this version of the story are true but I tend to give it an extra flare and connect points with a rationale/meaning that I didn’t really think too much of when it was happening. I am not sure if this extra level of depth was present at the time in my subconscious or if it is something I have concocted to give more meaning to my narrative.
I have also noticed the more I keep repeating a particular story with all the rationale and meaning that I have given to it, the more invested I become in it. I start to develop other tangential beliefs for that ideology, and this only makes my belief in the story stronger. It’s a vicious cycle where one becomes completely aligned with a particular ideology based on a story that was repeated over and over again.
This is a powerful concept. Everyone loves a good story and so as long as the story is able to explain what you have done in the past it can nudge you to do things in the future.
Zooming out for a bit.
My story defines who I am. Its a combination of my upbringing, cultural and religious views, overarching political ideologies in my country and in the world, life lessons taught by my parents and any major experiences I have encountered so far. If any one of those things changed, say I was brought up in Texas rather than Dhaka, I would be a different person. My motives, drive and outlook on life would all be different.
The point in time you are born into also has a lot to do with who you are. Each era has had one or multiple ideologies which have had an overarching effect on the individual self. Nationalism, capitalism, socialism, Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism are all major ideologies.
People during the twentieth century were very patriotic and had a lot of nationalistic pride. The century was filled with major wars all over the world. People had to believe that the wars served a higher purpose, that it was for the greater good. Repeating this over and over again, they were able to solidify their beliefs. This resulted in a nationalistic ideology which made it easier to convince the general public for future wars.
The same can be said about people from more religious backgrounds. Simply believing in the existence of a god makes the individual more prone to believe in other superstitious activities and practices.
Everyone loves a good story, we believe we can solve all our problems by following a narrative that is bigger than us, even though we may not know where it may lead. Religion, capitalism, equality— these are all ideologies with no clear expiry date and so it’s easier for us to believe in them rather than accept there may not be a right or wrong and that what is present, is all. What we do, how we react, these aren’t free choices they are all intertwined with where we are from, when we are from and the experiences we have had. Thergo there is no true self or freedom of choice.
Sometimes we will let things happen without really thinking about it but then when we look back in hindsight we try to rationalize it. This is just what we do. We make up a story for ourselves of why we did things the way we did. As we do more things we keep making the stories more complex and sooner or later we start to identify ourselves with our stories and let them define us not realizing they were just a series of random events.
I really don't have a clear conclusion for this observation. All I can say is that it's important to be mindful of our own identity. Just stopping and checking our actions, both past and the intended future helps to put things into perspective. It's equally important to not dwindle in this thought too much as it may lead you down a rabbit hole.
