Becoming the Author of Your Own Life

Do you ever stop to consider how your own life story is being revealed to you this very moment?

If you’re like most of us, this is probably not a thought you have very often. Just like the way we read literal stories in books, it is usually not the individual words and sentences that we pay attention to. 

When it comes to literal reading, one of the reasons we do this is that our brains are already filling in the words to come—before we’ve even seen them. That means that right now, as you read this sentence, you’re not so much “reading” in the sense of interpreting each squiggle on the screen, but more-so “reading” in the sense of predicting the future based on what you’re seeing in the present.

In his book Stumbling on Happiness, psychologist Daniel Gilbert calls this process “nexting.” He explains that we humans use this process in every moment, allowing us to seamlessly digest whatever is occurring, and spit out our next action or thought as a result: Every time we catch a frisbee in the air or adjust our gait when walking on uneven ground, we are demonstrating our capacity to make “automatic, continuous, nonconscious predictions of our immediate, personal futures.” In other words, we actually have very little control or understanding over a huge amount of what we do—and we’d probably be pretty screwed if that wasn’t the case.

One could argue, though, that this “nexting” behaviour encapsulates more than just “small” actions like reading or playing frisbee: that it speaks in a broader sense to the way we live much of our lives. Because, for better or for worse, all our seemingly insignificant actions ultimately accumulate into our lifetimes—and, like it or not, most of these actions are happening on autopilot. The question then arises: if we can’t control our “nexting,” then how do we actually live autonomous lives?

Well, the answer might depend on your definition of the word autonomy. If you think of autonomy as being free from constraints, then you may be out of luck. But I prefer the definition put forth by philosopher Ronald Dworkin: that autonomy is the state of being “an author” of our lives. So, while we can’t choose what happens to us—or even a large degree of what we ourselves do—we CAN choose the narratives we tell, through which we bring all of our actions to life. We CAN choose to zoom out and see the full-page view of our lives’ characters, themes, heroes and villains; we can decide how to make meaning of their actions, and to set intentions for the kind of stories we truly want to be telling.

So, even though you may be completing this sentence in your mind before the last word is in your actual line of sight—you can choose now to pause, and decide how this experience fits into the ongoing narrative of your life.

~Text by Shaina List