Visualizing a life

We love narratives. In the fairy stories, almost every incident along the way had a bearing on the climax. If the heroine shared her bread with an old woman the old woman later proves essential to solving some puzzle before the young lady. Good narratives are clean, if not always orderly.

That’s a useful way of looking at our lives. There’s a start, turning points, struggles and falls, and an every-day-moving-on until the end.

But I think it misses part of the big picture.

Think of every day as another scan line across the picture, building up an image. A big change in direction can change the image, but so can the thousand dots of daily little acts that nobody would put in the story.

So what picture have my habits and choices drawn? Is it clear or muddy, and what is missing? The narrative description won't tell me.