For this personal reflection, I have found a childhood picture of my sister and myself. The reason I share an image of one of my immediate family members is because they have been my constant as I grew up and they are the only ones who share as many memories with me in comparison to the friends I had to leave behind and the extended family I see once a year. This means that many of the life story narratives I share with people are narratives that my close family members also have. I find it difficult to describe myself by simply picking adjectives, so I tend to resort to telling people stories.

A common example is explaining my cultural background by sharing the narrative passed down from my parents about how they met and came to move around the world. That narrative has changed over time as my parents have become older and constantly readjust and shift their identities in response to various environmental cues. Narratives can also change depending on one’s identity construction and how one filters things as one goes through the world. This occurs when we retell our stories over time that relate to salient aspects of ourselves at certain points in time and as a consequence, the accuracy of the reconstruction of memories changes. It is important to note that identity does shift and change over time, so what my ideas of my "self" and identity are now will probably be very different when I am older and have gone through more life events, therefore adding more narratives to my already vast collection.

“Identity is the story that the modern I constructs and tells about the me. To the extent the modern I can indeed relate the me as a meaningful story, the I succeeds in meeting the modernist challenge to construe the self as a dynamic, multileveled project that is integrated in time and across social space” (McAdams, 1997,  p. 63)

The modern I in this moment is aware of the many levels of experience throughout time and varied across different social contexts, but I still struggle to reconcile the contrasting details of my life story. When reflecting on my life, I refer to my autobiographical memory which “helps to locate and define the self within an ongoing life story that, simultaneously, is strongly oriented toward future goals” (McAdams, 2001, p. 107). Of course, my autobiographical memories are different from my family’s memories of me because every person interprets the world in their own way. As mentioned in McAdams (2001), “the term personal memory is a misnomer, because the majority of important memories are shared with other people,” so the concept of intimate memories was proposed. Realizing such cognitive processes are influenced by others’ interpretations and stories has lead me to reflect question what aspects of the self stem from me and how much is determined by others and my environment. Of course, there is no objective or experimental way to ascertain the origins of the many facets of my “self,” so I am content with not knowing.

References:

McAdams, D.P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 100 - 118.

McAdams, D. P. (1997). The case for unity in the (post) modern self. Self and identity: Fundamental issues, 1, 46-78.