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I have been thinking a great deal about the story-teller andour sense of self.  My father is asinger-songwriter.  He has a line in oneof his songs that has always resonated with me:  “We are the stories that we tell.” I’ve alwaysloved that line.  Who are we,really?  Are we are bodies?  Maybe to some extent, but as Paul pointedout, Christopher Reeve, wouldn’t necessarily identify with his body.  Are we our brains? Sure, but what does thatmean?  We don’t identify with our amygdale.

When it comes down to it, our identity is a collection ofstories, big and small that we tell ourselves. Our identity is also acollection of stories that other people tell about us and about the worldaround us.  Those stories help usnavigate the world. They tell us who we are.

This becomes really interesting when we think about how ourstories change over time, how our personal stories relate to family stories andsocietal stories. Its also really interesting to think about how stories thatwe tell look in cases of mental illness.