
How Identity Ages - dnetesn
http://aging.nautil.us/feature/214/how-identity-ages
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F_J_H
Although not the main point of the article, this stood out to me:

 _> >It’s a story you’ve got about how you came to be, who you are, and where
your life’s going...Narrative identity is just as much about how you imagine
the future, even though it hasn’t happened yet, as it is about how you
reconstruct the past. If I’m planning to be president of the United States,
and I’m currently laboring in academia, well you’re going to have to develop a
way to connect up your past with your goals for the future._

Having recently past my 47th birthday, I’ve come to realize how important is
the notion of building a “narrative identity”.

It’s one piece of advice I’d love to give my younger self, and am starting to
gratuitously give to younger people I speak with – come up with a narrative
you wish to be the story of your life, and then day in, day out, lay down the
bricks that will build that narrative into a reality. Be aware of the
connections you need to build now, which will become your past, to what you
want in the future.

 _How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives._ said Annie
Dillard. Each decision you make, each project you start, each job you take –
think of how it will impact the narrative you wish to build. Be deliberate
about it. The small things you do each day, taken in aggregate, is what your
life will be. Just like when kids make designs in freshly fallen snow, at the
end of all your tramping, there will be a sketch, a print. Make sure it’s one
you’d want.

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peterlk
I don't think it's right to say that people "just forget the negative stuff".
To me, the difference in getting older is that I can assign meaning to my
suffering. Whet you're suffering as a kid, it seems pointless and painful. As
you get older, you have time to see others experience pain and also play
through enough hypothetical scenarios that you can find meaning in your own
suffering. This, I believe, is one of the secrets to being happy. It is why we
often hear stories of resilient cancer survivors and mountaineers who never
gave up. Finding purpose and meaning in your suffering is what makes it
bearable. This is also a compelling argument for the merits of religion.

I don't think people "forget" pain. They just earn a perspective on the pain
that doesn't cause them pain. Usually this perspective includes some link to
the present in opposition to a potentially worse outcome which makes the past
sound rosier to an outsider.

Tangential point: you don't always get credit for toking things seriously, but
you do always get credit (in one form or another) for being lighthearted, and
these two things are not orthogonal. I believe this is also why our narratives
shift.

~~~
kough
> As you get older, you have time to see others experience pain and also play
> through enough hypothetical scenarios that you can find meaning in your own
> suffering. This, I believe, is one of the secrets to being happy. It is why
> we often hear stories of resilient cancer survivors and mountaineers who
> never gave up. Finding purpose and meaning in your suffering is what makes
> it bearable.

I think this is what the McAdams is describing when he speaks about
"redemption stories".

