• Blog #8: (200-300 words) Julie Beck covers a lot of ground as she explores narrative’s potentially powerful influence on our lives. Identify at least three notable assertions or other moments in Beck’s text that caused you to sit up straighter and take note. Explain what exactly caught your eye. Did you react as a believer or doubter? Did you build a connection between the text and the world or the text and your self?

Julie Beck covers an interesting topic about narratives. She says that “life is incredibly complex, there are lots of things going on in our environment and in our lives at all times, and in order to hold onto our experience, we need to make meaning out of it,” That is a great point that she makes, she says that stories give us meaning. I don’t think that stories are the only thing that gives us meaning, but they definitely are a large part of our lives and she helped me understand that. I also noticed that she said how many people keep journals and discuss everything going on in their lives. I think that that definitely plays a role in mental health-similar to Khullar’s text that we read in class. Talking about what is happening in your head or even things in your life is beneficial to keeping yourself healthy. Something that I never realized were imbedded in our lives are standard narratives. They can be a good thing for growing children and adults to stay on track, but they also could be bad. she says that “they stigmatize anyone who doesn’t follow them to a T, and provide unrealistic expectations of happiness for those who do.” I agree with her statement, I have never realized before this that parents can be bad influences because they push you in the direction everyone thinks you should go. I believe a lot of the points that Beck made, it seems like narratives are around us and in our everyday lives. I think they can be good to have and use for ourselves and our own health.

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