Last night, my friends and I had a harvest celebration. After dinner, we sat around a fire and told stories. As I sat and listened to some fascinating and eloquent stories, memories of past experiences flowed through my head like a river through the land. I realized that so much of who we consciously conceive ourselves to be is related to memories of who we were in past experiences. And we get to pick these memories from which we consciously define ourselves! So in many ways, how we construct our identities (or egos) helps to move us in certain directions in life and toward certain goals.

At most, however, only half of our lives’ paths, half of our identities are made up of these conscious choices to affiliate chosen memories with who we consider ourselves to be. I say, “at most…half,” because we are really only using our ‘conscious’ minds for half our lives, considering that we sleep roughly 8 hours a night and spend considerable amounts of our waking lives daydreaming. This is an interesting point to me because in our society at this point in time, we put so much emphasis on the control and perception abilities of the conscious, intellectual mind, while marking as inferior or less useful the unconscious mind, our so-called ‘dream-state.’

There are dark places in the mind, often hidden from view of the conscious mind (the ego) where all our history lives. In dreams (and also throughout our waking lives), this history sometimes reveals itself given a proper chance and a fertile environment. I bring all of this to light, because who I am is part who I define myself to be consciously and part who I am unconsciously, the old soul. I could tell you memories of past experiences that highlight how I would define myself only on the conscious level, or I could give you a glimpse into my psychology and perhaps provide through the intellectual form of the essay a more holistic picture of myself.

I have attempted to do the latter, probably at a very unflattering success level, but at the very least I would like to leave you with two points for consideration. First, storytelling is an ancient pastime that weaves our past with the future right in the present moment, it weaves our conscious with our unconscious and it connects individuals through the common human experience. Second, our friends often know us best and can see things about us that even we cannot see. They see us as we are. So in conclusion, love your friends and challenge them to be themselves consciously and unconsciously that we might understand and live our human experience at heightened levels.