The Story You Tell Yourself

Readers,
  Recently in class we broached the subject of belief. We did not get to this topic through religion, as one might suspect, but rather through a discussion about happiness. We eventually decided that happiness is really all about perception, and that someone with a small paycheck could be just as happy as someone with a large one, simply because they believe they are. But then our teacher made the claim that perhaps everything we are is simply a story we tell ourselves. That our goods and bads are all made up in our minds. That we are a self-defining species, and maybe even our limitations are set by ourselves.
  This instantly struck a chord with me, because it is a philosophy that I stiffly stick to. I picked it up from a book I read by Patrick Rothfuss, titled The Name of the Wind. In this book one of the main characters describes this philosophy, but with one step further. The character used the example of a man many considered to be a hero, but went into hiding as a bartender. He said that we are all defined by the stories that we tell ourselves and by the stories others believe about us. He claimed that the Hero had been created by people telling stories of his heroic deeds, and eventually the Hero believed he was one. But then the Hero had to go into hiding, so he took on the persona of a bartender. He wore this persona like a mask, a bartender's face, but a Hero's soul. People saw him as a bartender, but in his mind-story he was still a Hero. As time went on, however, he began to believe that he was indeed a bartender, and not actually the Hero he had been built up to be. Thus his mind-story changed, and the Hero was gone.
  While this is a sad example of how we view ourselves, I think it shows exactly what I am talking about. We may define ourselves in our minds, but we are equally shaped by the belief of others. Even the strongest mind is eventually worn down by the belief of thousands. One simply cannot continue to believe they are a Hero, when everyone else is convinced they are a bartender. But the best part of this philosophy, I think, is that it could go both ways. If in a mind-story someone is convinced they are ugly, then that is all they know. But if everyone they know believes they are beautiful, then eventually they will believe this too.
   I say all of this because I think it is incredible to see the power of belief in how we see things. We could create a complete lie, but if everyone believes it, then it is true. That is the power of faith, it can turn lies into the truth, and the truth into lies.