Been pondering what story I might be telling myself, over the past 30 years... It was brought up today as a therapy tool...
Example: Some people claim that one or both parents always hated them, and that this perspective was transferred onto other people: "Because my mom hated me, then no one else could possibly love me, either."
One thing I thought about, briefly, was the idea person voted "Most Likely to Succeed" in high school is doomed to fail in adult life. (Basically, the life schools that they used in high school to succeed there were abyssmal for achieving success outside of school.) I have it in my mind that this scenario is commonly used in lots of movies; especially when there may be a 20 or 50 year class reunion in that movie's script.
Yes, I was voted Most Likely to Succeed by my class. ...and yes, when I consider the chain of events in the nearly 30 years since graduating, I want to scream to the stars how much of a failure that I seem to be..
In a similar vein, I have this "second-place finish" story that I catch myself playing in. Sure, I might have made it to the UIL state level competition, for multiple years in science and one year in number sense... but I did not finish those events in first place. Sure, I might have graduated Salutatorian... but that didn't earn me the Texas Valedictorian's Scholarship. Those are probably extreme examples, but, to me, the "second-place finish" plays out along the theme that "Sure, I can do good work, but it's not the best, and therefor, I will not get any reward or notice for it." (Yes, I could probably be a decent romantic partner; but I fall short of the Hollywood picture [or i'm not sexy enough, mysterious enough, physically fit enough] so I'll be constantly passed over while my romantic interests chase after their "One") ...this could also be couched as "I'm just average, so nobody will pay attention to what I can do, because there's supposedly "better than average" out there...
At which point, I can picture people saying "push yourself harder" or "focus on the task at hand"... or trying to refute the story with claims that they do notice what i do. That might all be great or true statements, and they might be a way to try to diffuse the story... yet I still catch myself trying to use this story to rationalize my thinking.
Hell, I still try to fit both mine and others' lives into neatly packed stories... because people like to make connections and make conclusions of events, in the hope that it will make the world make sense to them. ...and a lot of the times, those connections are strong enough to have predictive value?
Why should I try to interpret my dreams? Why should I believe astrology and all of its' open-ended statements? Why should I throw out science, when, with practice, it got us to the Moon? Why should I believe the strange practices of psychologists? Why do Greek and Norse myths still get air time in the 20th century? [spinning]
Or... there are scripts that we use daily in our interactions, especially with strangers, that help smooth our passage through the day. Some people claim they were never taught how to live, which could be true, in various degrees... Yet, when a random stranger asks, "How are you?", most of the time, you will reflexively answer "Fine." even if you may not be... the more familiar you are with the person, the better chance that you may trust them enough to give them an answer other than "Fine".
[still spinning.... getting distracted by side tasks... posting
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