The ability to tell an accurate and coherent story about your own life is, David Brooks argues, a vital skill that nobody teaches us. You cannot know who you are unless you can tell your story. You cannot have a stable identity until you take the inchoate events of a life and turn them into something that holds together. And as Doris Lessing asked, how do we know what to do next unless we know what story we are a part of? We do not learn this in the abstract, he says. We learn it in life, when someone asks and we have to answer, and the version that comes out depends on who is asking. A room of lawyers gets a different story than an old friend from college. But underneath the versions, he suggests, most of us are living inside one of a few elemental plots. The redemption story: things were fine, crisis came, I returned better. Dan McAdams at Northwestern found Americans tell these constantly, and audiences abroad often told him it was not their shape at all. There is overcoming the monster. There is being born into blessing and living up to the responsibility to share it. Brooks draws on memoirs to show how a governing story shapes a life, including Andre Agassi's account of being enslaved to a game he hated, and Tina Turner's three-act arc from captivity through years of inner work to a career she began again at forty. Then the conversation turns to why telling your story is a creative act, because so is seeing. We assume perception works like a camera, light flooding in. It does not. We project models outward and correct them, which is why English speakers see seven bands in a rainbow and Russian speakers, who have separate words for light and dark blue, see eight. It is why most people watching a basketball video miss the man in the gorilla suit walking through the middle of it. They did not predict gorilla. The neuroscientist Anil Seth calls life a controlled hallucination. Brooks closes with a study he loves. Students asked to judge the steepness of a campus hill wildly overestimated it, guessing thirty degrees for a five degree grade, every time but one. That day the researchers had asked the women's soccer team. To Division One athletes, the hill did not look steep. Carry a backpack and it gets steeper. Listen to sad music and it gets steeper still. How a situation looks depends on what you are capable of doing in it. That, he says, is constructivism, and it is worth respecting how creatively we assemble our world, in helpful ways and unhelpful ones. Want to go deeper with David Brooks? Join Sounds True One for more teachings like this. Get your first month FREE at https://bit.ly/4ctecMn Subscribe to Sounds True's YouTube Channel ► https://bit.ly/SubscribeSTYT Sounds True is a mission-driven learning and media company, and a recognized leader in wellbeing, personal growth, and spiritual transformation. Partnering with the world’s foremost wisdom teachers and best-selling authors, the company reaches millions worldwide with its unique programs, digital learning experiences, and worldwide events. The company also features a variety of original series, weekly shows, and live online experiences on Sounds True One, its global platform and community with members across more than 125 countries. Sounds True is a Public Benefit Corporation and also the home of the Sounds True Foundation. Connect with us: ▪️Facebook: http://bit.ly/2XFIIeE ▪️Instagram: http://bit.ly/2UlEoiH ▪️Website: http://bit.ly/2tOl02d