How Narrative Creates Personality

Our life consists of stories from the people we meet, the places we visit, the food we eat and experiences we live. Similarly, one thing that has consistently stayed and helped me build my story is the idea of traveling from a local perspective. Traveling is a lot like the public transit system that works by us actively participating and engaging in the journey. We end up taking different paths and sometimes we get lost, but we are always evolving and growing our experiences in the process. Listening to people, the various languages they speak, the useful things they say and everything about the journey sounds amazing to me.

The narrative we have in our lives shapes the way we perform in the future. It defines our individuality and uniqueness to do things that we are meant to do. Stories of childhood, happy times, depression, experiences, heart breaks, financial stability, language, food and people make our perspectives come alive. We watch.We observe. We learn and we reflect.

Well to be completely honest, my interest in traveling grew from my father’s adventurous stories from his younger days. I have always asked him to write a book about his life for he has some amazing stories to tell. His journey in the 1960’s from one country to the other began with a train ride to a distant land that he knew nothing about. He was just an ordinary young boy with a story. With very little money in hand, he left his homeland in search for his identity in the neighboring country. His father just passed away, his mother requested him to move with his uncle, pursue his education, become ‘someone’ in life and help his younger siblings back home. That was the norm he was expected to follow. He was a young man with tons in mind and many responsibilities on his shoulders.

It was during this move and his time on an international train when the passengers were attacked by bandits or ‘dacoits’. The way he escaped death still gives a chill down my spine. People were looted and killed based on religious affiliations. The gang resorted to robbing the stunned passengers of their money and valuables. Despite being scared to death and not knowing how he would come out of the train alive, he made it and survived the traumatic incident.

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