I sat down to write this yesterday, and it poured out in 45 minutes. It isn’t perfect, but it is authentic. It is a collection of a few thoughts about my internal dialogue. I think I will call it “The Stories We Tell Ourselves”.
I have read several quotes about how we think of ourselves (below), and I have sensed a shift about this:
- “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”
- “We see things not as they are, but as we are”
- “The stories we tell ourselves…”
- And the Kurt Vonnegut poem on “Enough”….
I have been carrying an internal dialogue of “not good enough” or “less than” for as long as I can remember. I have an early memory of bringing home a test with a 98 score. My mother’s response was “why didn’t you get a 100?!” I have been trying to avoid 98s for a long time.
Another meaningful quote, (I think from “Kitchen Table Wisdom”): “I do not have a soul…I am a soul”. And I am learning that my soul is enough, and that my soul wants to connect with other souls. When my soul connects with other souls, I am enough, I have enough, there is enough. I don’t need a 100.
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I have worked in pharma for almost 40 years, much of it on the periphery of clinical trials. In the clinical trial space, pharma used to refer to those who participated in clinical trials as “subjects”. The people who were referred to as subjects felt that that term was demeaning, that it made them feel like laboratory animals. So the terminology changed to “patients”. And the people who were referred to as patients felt that that term made them feel as though they were being defined by their disease. (In other words, if someone has asthma, are they an “asthmatic” or are they someone who has asthma?). Now the trend is for people who participate in clinical trials to be referred to as “participants”.
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In the recovery world, people with alcoholism have self identified as “alcoholics” or “addicts” since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935. In 2026, there is a trend for people to not want to be identified by their alcoholism.
Is someone an alcoholic? Or is that person someone with alcoholism? Or someone with a problem with alcohol? Or someone with a substance use disorder?
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I recently heard someone discuss a Greek myth about the Ship of Theseus. I have included an AI overview of this Greek myth:
What happens if a ship composed of 30 planks has 10 of those planks replaced? Is it still the same ship? At what point would the original ship not be the original ship anymore?
More importantly, what happens when we change over time? Are we the same person, or are we a different person, or somewhere in between?
I tell a friend (named Keith) about some of my “adventures” when I was younger. He tells me “Hal, you aren’t that person anymore”. Am I the same person that I was when I was 18? Am I a completely different person? Or somewhere in between?
The point of the Ship of Theseus myth isn’t about the ship. It is about us, and our character and identity.
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In the 2014 memoir “Just Mercy”, human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson states “we are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done”.
I suppose we are also less than the best thing we have ever done.
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Ed Koch was the mayor of New York City from 1978-1989. He used to ask the people of New York “How’m I doin?” It was his way of avoiding blind spots, and taking informal opinion polls about what other people thought of his performance.
Sometimes I ask the people I am closest to “How am I doing?” I want to know. I need to know. I have the capacity to grade my own test paper, and if I do that, I either give myself marks that are too low, or too high. When I ask that question, I signal to them that I am open to change.
I want to be open to change because I am curious about the world, and about myself. I want to be curious, and be open to change, all the days of my life.
There is a prayer that I see on the walls of a lot of sacred places. It is called the Serenity Prayer, but I think of it as my Change Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
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P.S. I was going to call this essay “A Case of Mistaken Identity”, but that sounded darker than what I want to express.
