Recently, I've become addicted to the TV show "Lost" (No spoilers please, I just started the second season). It seems to be a theme of the show that it is our lies, our secrets, our half-truths, that make us who we are, that make us human. I think this is an interesting hypothesis, but perhaps there's more to it than that.
What makes us human isn't lies, exactly, it's narratives. "Lost" is a show about narratives, and how we control, or attempt to control, our own narratives. In some cases, we have very little control over our own lives. But we do have some control of how we represent ourselves. Every made-up detail, every withheld detail, every one of the words we choose, is a story that we are telling about ourselves. The story is who we want to be, or who we think the person in front of us wants us to be. Narrative is a means of survival, and a means of identity. Taking control of someone else's narrative is also a means of revenge, or sabotage. Or it can be a means of healing, or peace.
Each of us are stories within stories. There are the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories others tell about us, the stories that we were born into, and the stories that came after us. Each one of us is "lost" in a maze of stories, and the only way to be found is to acknowledge and accept all of it as ours, even the parts that don't make sense, even the parts that contradict each other.
What makes us human isn't lies, exactly, it's narratives. "Lost" is a show about narratives, and how we control, or attempt to control, our own narratives. In some cases, we have very little control over our own lives. But we do have some control of how we represent ourselves. Every made-up detail, every withheld detail, every one of the words we choose, is a story that we are telling about ourselves. The story is who we want to be, or who we think the person in front of us wants us to be. Narrative is a means of survival, and a means of identity. Taking control of someone else's narrative is also a means of revenge, or sabotage. Or it can be a means of healing, or peace.
Each of us are stories within stories. There are the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories others tell about us, the stories that we were born into, and the stories that came after us. Each one of us is "lost" in a maze of stories, and the only way to be found is to acknowledge and accept all of it as ours, even the parts that don't make sense, even the parts that contradict each other.
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