The Act of Living by Frank Tallis

Author:Frank Tallis [TALLIS, FRANK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

Most of the reasons why we do one thing, rather than another, are not accessible. Consequently, the brain creates explanatory narratives. These are essentially confabulations, or best guesses. Neuroscientists call the inner, story-generating voice the “left-brain interpreter.” We exist in a terrifying vastness of unimaginable complexity. Narrative brings order to chaos. It is reassuring and makes us feel more in control. The universe is less frightening if we have a story. It doesn’t have to be a true story—most stories aren’t—it just has to be a story that serves its purpose. A human being is not so much a single person as a community of selves. There is a consensus across almost all schools of psychotherapy that psychological health is strongly associated with integration. Congruence is always preferable to incongruence.

What keeps all these selves together? What links the inner child with the adult—the ego with the ego ideal—the slob we are at home with the efficient professional who arrives in the workplace? They all share the same story. The neuroscientist David Eagleman has stated that behavior is simply the final outcome of a battle between competing selves: our inner narrator “works around the clock to stitch together a pattern of logic to our daily lives: what just happened and what was my role in it?”6

Your story is your communicable essence—and if you can’t tell your story, you are in danger of losing the plot.

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