The Epic of a Lifetime: On Writing Your Personal Fable

Even in Silence, We Still Hear Stories

Forty-thousand years ago, our forefathers confronted the challenges of harsh glacial environments during what was the last major ice age in human history. Our ancestors survived by controlling fire, hunting animals, gathering wild plants, and sheltering in caves to shield themselves from the frigid torrent of snow and storm. Toward the end of this period in human prehistory, one of our ancestors created something remarkable. It remains today one of the oldest expressions of our species’ creativity – a work of prehistoric art that is estimated to have taken more than 370 hours of work (about 6-7 weeks). The labour put into the art form is all the more impressive when you consider that the crafter’s, and their tribe’s main concerns at the time were surviving predators and ensuring a constant supply of food.

Originally discovered as ivory fragments in 1939 in Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in the Lone Valley of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, it would take another thirty years before archeologist Joachim Han reassembled humanity’s oldest figure sculpture. Bearing the body of a man and the head of a lion, Löwenmensch (Lionman) stands 28.1.cm tall, 6.3cm wide, and 5.9cm thick [1]. Striking a confident posture and poise, we can only guess Lionman’s role in our ancestors’ lives. Lionman was a mythical figure. A figure of imagination. And where there is myth and imagination, there are those who create them. The silent statue, a testament to humanity’s fondness for fables, and their ability to construct tangible representations of what they saw as divine or supernatural [2]. Perhaps Lionman was part of a ritualistic object for early religious beliefs. Perhaps he was a symbol of reverence or worship of dangerous predators. Whichever role Lionman was placed in, he is part of a human story. One might imagine him being passed around between members of a tribe as they gathered around a fire, regaling one another with their stories. We have been telling stories for more than 45,000 years; Lionman being part of the earliest stories we told ourselves and the world around us. The weathered ivory figure does not speak – but it hasn’t stopped modern-day archeologists from giving him a voice.

Modern Storytelling and Stories of the Self

Today, we continue to enjoy stories through literary fiction, television series, and movies. Campfire and bedtime stories continue to be a beloved tradition for bonding with others. Stories are part of the human experience. We convey moral teachings to our children disguised as animal stories (Aesop’s fables, anyone?). We read fantasy because it helps us understand social worlds better. We gossip as a way to bond with others through enticing hearsay. Writing in Primal Intelligence, the professor of story science Angus Fletcher argues that storytelling is one of our most important human abilities. Elements of storytelling and ‘storythinking’ – intuition, imagination, emotion, and commonsense form abilities that, according to him, are not replaceable by artificial intelligence [3]. Being able to tell stories, argues Joe Lazar in The Storytelling Edge, is the next ‘super skill’ in an increasingly AI-powered world. It is, according to him, a trait that “makes humans human” [4].

It was only in the 1980s that psychologists started exploring how we can understand ourselves through the lens of storytelling. The story we tell ourselves is what psychologist Dan McAdams calls our narrative identity – your internalized and evolving life story. It is a story that reconstructs your past and shapes an imagined future. It is your personality in story form. It is a story that gives you connectedness and purpose (McAdams, 2011). Your story may not be perfect. It rarely is, because the human experience isn’t. There are arcs – the emotional highs of love, success, and meaning, as there will be the lows of betrayal, setbacks, and meaninglessness (McAdams et al. 2011). A redemptive life story arc is a transition point in life where an emotionally negative event turns into a positive or good outcome. A layoff that led to a renewed sense of meaning in a new job. A contamination arc, in contrast, is when a turning point leads to negative or bad outcomes. An impulsive decision that led to fractured family ties. If your personality and life account can be presented as a story, what redemptive and contamination arcs do you see? What are the major turning points in your life? And perhaps most importantly, to ask, “If I were to continue this story, what’s the next chapter going to be like?”

A Personal Fable for Flourishing

I’ve been journalling daily for the past 20 years. Writing a daily account of my life has become a habit, helping me better understand my experiences and my emotions. When you write daily accounts of your experience for 20 years, however, something else happens. You start seeing a connective thread between the days, weeks, and months of your life. I start seeing myself not just as a ‘static’ person – but rather, an evolving one. My daily journal entries first included prices of what I had for lunch between my lectures, scheduled appointments, and general musings about how I felt during the day. Over the years, the daily entries changed to become something more contemplative. The journal eventually became less of a utility tool, and more of a story – almost an autobiography of life’s ups and downs, trials and triumphs; a written record of the person I am becoming along with privately-held hopes and aspirations. These writings made me a more complex person – but in psychological-speak, this was a good thing. It helped me realize how I was becoming an individual with increasingly overlapping but different self-aspects and identity anchors – an idea captured by self-complexity theory (Linville, 1987).

Think about the many stories you’ve lived through, simple from the various roles you play on the theatre of life. You are someone’s cherished son or daughter. Early childhood experiences form your origin story. You were (or might still be) a student. These tell a story of growth. You might feel yourself to be an important – or perhaps, neglected member of your organization or society. These are stories of belonging. You take pride, or perhaps feel a tinge of regret, from being a parent. A story of change. Someone once called you a mentor. Or a best friend. You are seen as a celebrity or influential figure in your industry. Other times, you feel like a nobody. These are stories of significance. You’re the funny one, the serious one, the one everyone seeks out when they need a shoulder to cry on. You could be all, or none of these. In between your life’s varied experiences, however, you might, like me, come to realize, “I am none of these – yet I feel like something more.”

The story you’ve created of yourself is a personal tale of becoming. Write about it. Seeing ourselves as an evolving story, we realize that we hold the pen that writes the next chapter. Thinking in story helped me understand the ‘why’s for setbacks, for past mistakes, creating the space for the promise of a better future. Even if the continuity from a contamination arc came later, I still felt it was possible to write a narrative that allowed me to look forward. With every flip of the page of my personal story, I become not just the reader, but also the author of my own life. For most of us, that will be the only story we need to write and tell – the story of who we are, and how we came to be. Written coherently, your story no longer becomes a daily account of your actions. Its reflections, realizations, and redemptive arc make it something more akin to your personal fable for a flourishing life.

What does your personal fable say about you?

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.

Sue Monk Kidd

References

[1] Bradshaw Foundation (n.d.) Lion Man. Available at: https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/sculpture/lion_man.php

[2] Guido Pallazo (2025). Lionman – the power of storytelling. Available at: https://guidopalazzo.com/lionman-the-power-of-storytelling/

[3] Fletcher, A. (2025). Primal intelligence. Avery.

[4] Lazar, J. (2024). Why storytelling will be the super skill of the AI age. Available at: https://storytellingedge.substack.com/p/why-storytelling-will-be-the-super

[5] McAdams, D. P. (2011). Narrative identity. In Handbook of identity theory and research (pp. 99-115). New York, NY: Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7988-9_5

[6] McAdams, D. P., Reynolds, J., Lewis, M., Patten, A. H., & Bowman, P. J. (2001). When bad things turn good and good things turn bad: Sequences of redemption and contamination in life narrative and their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults and in students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(4), 474-485. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201274008

[7] Linville, P. W. (1987). Self-complexity as a cognitive buffer against stress-related illness and depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(4), 663-676. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.4.663

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