"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut

We are feedback loops. We are the stories we tell ourselves.

This is fascinating: "A psychotherapist can therefore be seen as a kind of script doctor who helps patients revise their life stories so that they can play the role of protagonists again — suffering and flawed protagonists, to be sure, but protagonists who are moving toward the light."

this is fascinating!  remember in the movie HER, when the os says that the story she has been telling herself is just a story and yet it was making her feel inferior?  and remember in I HEART HUCKABEES how jude law keeps telling the same story again and again until his life is nothing more than a meaningless show?

i met a doctor who wrote a book called Healing Hypertension.  he said that if he could get his patients to rewrite traumatic stories from their past, they could significantly lower their blood pressure.

i think the reason we like new relationships so much is that we can start anew every time.  we can rewrite our stories and our selves every time we make a new friend, especially if that new friend has no connection to our old life.  same goes for moving to a new city or a new school or a new job.  but as we get older, our roots and our stories are more established and these opportunities for story changes happen far less frequently.

it would be nice to get to rewrite our lives every few years, wouldn't it?  we should make a point to edit our stories every so often.  as a friend of mine once said, "stories i tell about myself only get good around the third telling."

all of our stories should be good. and some of our stories should be deleted altogether.  after all, there's two sides to every story... often more.  make yours worth telling!

(now THIS would make a great children's book!)

Yes it would!

Those are some great insights.

We are feedback loops; we are the stories we tell.

Add to HER and I HEART HUCKABEES the Charlie Kaufman movie ADAPTATION.

The difference between being and becoming are our changing, adapting stories we tell about ourselves.

Add one more: ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.

From that movie I learned that the ability to forget is important to happiness.

But the ability to remember is important to our essence, our spirits, our true selves.

great insights, adam!  i need to see both those movies again. 

Remember to Forget could be another band name!

Great idea! Added it: 

http://pandawhale.com/post/37974/candida-and-the-veggies-would-be-a-great-rock-band-name