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Stories we tell ourselves their bodies frozen after death in the hope that some-
day science will figure out how to restore them to life.
o you remember when you first The third story, says Cave, is that we can leave our
realized you were going to die? I’m body behind and live on as a soul. But what if you
not sure I do. The idea was more of don’t believe in a “soul”? No worries. Scientists are
an evolution than a realization. My currently working on ways to upload your “mind”
father died when I was four years to a computer.
Dold. Four-year-olds don’t understand The final story is a legacy story. We tell ourselves
death as a permanent, irreversible state. I remember for a that we will live on through our children, our writ-
long time thinking my father was going to come back. It just ing, our achievements, our reputations. This might
seemed natural. He went away for work every day and be the easiest type of immortality to achieve in the
came back for dinner. For me, the time after his death was digital age, although perhaps not the most welcome.
just a longer period of waiting for his return. Law professor Jeffrey Rosen writes, “It is very hard
to escape your past on the Internet now that every
I don’t think that way anymore, but I’m not sure photo, status update, and tweet lives forever in the
what I do think. Death is a mystery that is beyond cloud” (http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/
me. When I try to explain it, all I have are stories. privacy-paradox/right-to-be-forgotten?em_x=22).
Stories my mom and my teachers have told me. Telling a story can free us from limitations. But
Stories my faith tradition tells me. Stories psycholo- stories can also limit us. While acknowledging the
gists and scientists tell us. value and importance of stories, Margaret F. Arms
Philosopher Stephen Cave says that all of us says in this issue of Presence:
tell ourselves stories about death. All humans, he
says, are terrified of death: At worst, our story homes become prisons that shackle,
entrap, and shrivel our psyches and souls. Sometimes our
We have to live in the knowledge that the worst thing that story homes can harm us to the point where we can no
can possibly happen one day surely will, the end of all our longer survive. In either case—nourishing or crippling—
projects, our hopes, our dreams, of our individual world. story homes can become the ground of mistaken identity.
We each live in the shadow of a personal apocalypse…. Our story homes are important, but they do not tell us
Reminding people of death biases them to believe [in who we are at core. We misunderstand the role of these
immortality], regardless of the evidence. (http://www. story homes when we mistakenly believe, consciously or
ted.com/talks/stephen_cave_the_4_stories_we_tell_our- not, that we are our story homes. (49)
selves_about_death/transcript)
It is important not to confuse our identity, how-
Cave says there are four stories we tell ourselves, ever, with the stories we tell. Arms turns to Margaret
and the first story is the simplest. We simply don’t Silf to explain:
die. The search for the fountain of youth or the alche-
mists’s attempts to create an elixir of life reflect this She writes about moving from “Where I am” to “How I
type of story. Today, the elixir has morphed into hor- am” to “Who I am.” The first two (where and how) are tied
mone therapy, stem cell research, genetic engineering, to story—what has happened and the choices we make.
and nanotechnology. But it is all the same story. The last, the “who I am,” is the core of our being. It is the
The second is the story I was raised on. It is the res- true self…the place where the Divine light resides. (50)
urrection story. We will all die, but we will rise again.
For Christians, this is a full and complete bodily resur- The stories we tell might be stories of fear, stories of
rection—just as it was for Jesus. However, you don’t fantasy, stories of despair, or stories of hope. But we are
have to be religious to tell this story. Some people have not our stories. We are the storytellers. ■ —Nick Wagner

Volume 20 No. 3 • September 2014 3