Are we the stories we tell about ourselves?

When someone asks me how I am, I sometimes feel like I’m revising a script.

I’ve been running out of storage in my Google Photos, so over the last few weeks, I’ve been going through old photos and deleting those I don’t think I need to keep around. Even the process of choosing which ones to delete is odd — some people used to feel so important, and now I’m deleting their image because I’m running out of space. To be honest, mostly I’m just deleting screenshots I took of flight confirmations or maps, because I know for certain I won’t want to revisit those down the line. 

I’m also deleting some images of myself, in cases where I have so many of me, doing pretty much the same thing. I don’t need twenty copies of me posing in front of a rental car, do I? 

I found myself looking at these photos of me from 2018, in fact posing in front of a rental car (yes, that was a real reference), and thinking that I look so confident. And for a moment I felt nostalgic for that version of myself, the one who seems so comfortable putting her foot up on a car, staring down the camera. I want that confidence back! I found myself thinking.

But then I had another thought, which was that I don’t actually remember feeling confident. I remember performing confidence — for myself, for others, I’m not totally sure why. I remember feeling like I couldn’t admit, to myself or others, when I was feeling scared of something — especially if it was something tied in with my ambition. So I wouldn’t. And then I would go for it, whatever it was, and become less scared the deeper in I went. I suppose you could argue that the performance of confidence is not far from confidence itself — either way, you end up doing the thing. 

I think the current iteration of myself is less interested in performing confidence and more interested in, I guess, being honest with myself and others. I allow my fear and anxiety to come to the surface more than I did when I was younger. My sheen is thinner. Sometimes this feels hard, but overall, this feels good and right, like I’m allowing — or at least trying to allow — my fuller self to be in the room.

When someone asks me how I am, I sometimes feel like I’m revising a script. I tailor my answer based on who I’m talking to — do they want the unedited or abridged version? how much vulnerability will feel safe for them? — and once I’ve answered the question five or six times, I know the talking points. I know the highlights I have to hit for it to make sense, and the parts that end up slowing down the momentum of the story to the point that it becomes boring or illegible. And then my answer has become narrative — a digestible, follow-able account of something that in reality, is anything but. 

Even in attempting to explain “how I am doing”, I assume a separation of self as subject and author. I (the author) can evaluate how I (the subject) am doing, right? I actually am not sure! Who am I to suppose that my mental interiority is something I can perceive, let alone evaluate and understand? 

Let’s assume that the self as subject is actually totally inaccessible to the self as author, just to see where this takes us. In that case, the author is observing a subject, and taking their best freaking guess at how the subject is doing. The author uses empathy and observation to form some kind of conclusion. Like a scientist observing an ape who makes a sound that sounds like laughter; the scientist concludes, reasonably, that the ape is experiencing joy. Of course the scientist doesn’t actually know that the ape is joyful — but using the clues available, that’s the best explanation for the behavior. (Any scientists reading this please feel free to tell me I am wrong; it’s very possible.)

Here’s where I trip myself out a little bit. In our case, the scientist and the ape are the same entity, the same self. That means we have more information than the scientist; I know that for me, for example, laughter doesn’t always mean happiness. Sometimes I laugh because I’m happy; sometimes I laugh because I’m being polite; sometimes I laugh because I’m scared. So when I think of a time I was laughing, I have a sense of why — a sense that only I have, because my author-self is the closest thing to my subject-self, because we are actually one.

Because the author and the subject are the same entity, perhaps the author’s conclusion about the subject’s state of being is the subject’s state of being.

In other words, if I look at the events and emotions of my life, and think, I am doing well, then… I am. The conclusion that I, as author, draw about me, as subject, is correct, because I am the subject! Someone else could observe the subject and see (1) rising cost of living, (2) unemployment, (3) spending a lot of time reading and conclude the subject is not doing well. But I observe myself and see (1) rising cost of living, (2) unemployment, (3) spending a lot of time reading and still conclude, I feel pretty good these days!

Perhaps another way of saying this is, when it comes to the self, perception is reality (and yes, that is a catchphrase for Survivor). How I think I’m doing is how I’m doing. 

I’m learning more and more to, when it comes to my own life, trust the author. Maybe that’s what it really means to be confident.