Do You Have A Personal Story That Creates Your Self Concept?

Do you have a story that explains why your life has gone the various paths it has? Is it a story that has changed its meaning over the years as your life has changed, but still remained a core story? Here's what I mean. Here's my story:

One of my earliest memories is of being in an argument with my friend Billy. Billy said, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." I said, "Ignorance the law is the only excuse." Billy froze. Faced with two sayings, both of which sounded good, he had no way to choose between them. Finally he said, weakly, "Well it's still no excuse."

Recently I was explaining my interest in marketing my own T-shirt designs on the web. I told that story of Billy and me. As I told it, I realized that I used the same story to explain another, completely different, seemingly inconsistent thread in my life.

After the argument, I decided I never wanted to be in Billy's position. I decided to learn logic and reason so that I would always be able to see truth, not just the surface expression.

Following on this, a number of years later, in junior high school, I caught myself Boolean algebra. Boolean algebra prepared me for my career in computer science and provided me with decades of pleasure, income, and meaning.

To my disappointment, Boolean algebra didn't help me understand other people. With typical adolescent male sensitivity, I figured it was other people's obligation to be as logical as I imagined I was.

Looking back from years later, the incident with Billy has taken on another meaning. It left me fascinated with well-turned phrases. A few years after the argument, when my reading ability had become adequate, I got a book of quotations. I memorized a great many of them. I could quote them on any topic, with name of author, and I did. This also did not help me get along with other people.

From reading and memorizing these quotations, I naturally became convinced that it was right to reflect on life and to express those reflections succinctly and memorably. From a book of quotations I picked up the practice of philosophizing. This again has had at best mixed results in helping me get along with other people.

My enjoyment of quotes led to a major avocational activity: writing aphorisms, maxims and epigrams. I wasn't much interested in putting text around them. Books, essays, and even poems seemed to have too many lines that weren't quotable. What a waste of words. I fell in love with the purest expression of sayings: slogans on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and mugs.

So naturally, now that the barriers to entry are so incredibly low, I have set up T-shirt shops online at print-on-demand sites. The newest twist to my life explained by that one childhood argument.

Now computer science and word play are quite dissimilar things. They are separated by the chasm between the hard sciences and the humanities. Yet this one story explains my participation in both of them. The story of Billy and me has become, in the proper sense, a myth -- an important story that explains how things are and how they came to be that way.

Which brings me around to the question again, do you have a personal myth -- a story that explains the paths of your life with their contradictions? And how have you reinterpreted that story over the years?