I don’t know if I can face that answer.

Aren’t we everything we do, including writing?

Since you’re an INTP, I would have thought that you’d write largely for yourself, or at least to try to make the outside world conform to your view of the way the world should be.

Hi Loren! Concur with the above, except to note that, in my experience and in what I observe around the internet, much of that “self-reflection on those events” is usually just more narrative construction that creates a desired view of the self which may not be consistent with something else, because I’m reluctant to say, “the actual self.”

It’s like Shelley’s commenter who observed that he examined his beliefs all the time, and they always came up “true.”

The other day, I was reading an explanation offered by a certain high attention-earning weblogger on why he worked for MS. And his explanation included some very high-falutin’ words about “changing MS from within.” This lofty rhetoric rang a big bell with me, because when I was a very young man, my friends couldn’t believe I had accepted an appointment to the Naval Academy. In 1975, the military was still regarded with some disdain. So I offered that I was going to the Naval Academy to “change the system from within.” Of course, I was really going because there was no way I could disappoint my father, who had wanted me to go there since I was about 0. Which was just one of the first times I did something I didn’t really want to do, just to avoid disappointing someone. The MS weblogger moved 1000 miles away from his young son, and seriously compromised his role as a father, and I submit it wasn’t to “change MS from within.” Rather, I expect it was because he was either very attracted to what MS offered in terms of validation, or he wanted to get very far away from his son’s mother. In any event, we construct narratives to avoid having to deal with uncomfortable events, and the choices we make in those narratives have consequences of their own.

I wanted to confront the MS writer about his lofty mission and how that contrasted with his mission as a father and see what his response might be, but it wouldn’t be welcome. He’ll be revising that narrative one day.

As I look back over my own life, I see many of those choices now. Much of the time, we truly do not _know_ why we do the things we do, so we construct a narrative to explain ourselves to ourselves, and that’s what substitutes for self-reflection and the hard work of paying attention.

And we paint others into narrative corners with our opinions on who they are and what they stand for. Red versus Blue is part of that narrative now. “Pro-life” versus “pro-choice.” We’re all “good” guys. Except for all those “bad” guys we’re having to “take back” our country or democracy from.

We’re too clever by half. We polish and burnish our self-deception day after day, and we’re often praised for it. Only making the bonds of our lies grow tighter and tighter.

I love Springsteen’s The Long Goodbye:

My soul went walkin’ but I stayed here
Feel like I been workin’ for a thousand years
Chippin’ away at this chain of my own lies
Climbin’ a wall a hundred thousand miles high
Well I woke up this morning on the other side
Yeah yeah this is the long goodbye
Hey yeah this is the long goodbye
…
The moon is high and here I am
Sittin’ here with this hammer in hand
One more drink oughta ease the pain
Starin’ at that last link in the chain
Well let’s raise our glass and let this hammer fly
Hey yeah this is the long goodbye
Hey yeah this is the long goodbye

The essence of Zen is there is no essence. But, in part, it’s also seeing existence past the struggle of narrative to put distance between ourselves and our suffering.

Just don’t believe everything you read. Or everything you write, either.