The stories we tell of ourselves -Jo Carroll
As you read this, I'm on my way to a funeral. I have agreed to 'say a few words.' So I shall probably be driving round the M25 working out what I'm going to say. I lie. I'm not quite that disorganised. But I won't have it written down to the last comma, either. Instead I'll have a card or two to remind me, and then speak as I feel. This - I promise - is not the same as 'winging it.' It is, rather, a half-way - a gathering of ideas so that I have a rough structure and then responding to the feelings of the moment. I will have 2-3 minutes so sum up the 60+ years I've known her. And somehow I need to do that without diminishing her. But it has got me thinking - not only about the woman I need to speak about, but about the stories we tell of ourselves. Isn't that what we all try to do of ourselves - that 140 characters on Twitter, the baby biographies on Facebook? We reduce our complexities to soundbites in the hope that we can, somehow, us...