When we meet somebody, or read about something they’ve accomplished, we are getting only a thin slice of a much larger picture. That person began somewhere, and then went through a unique set of struggles and obstacles.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps they benefitted from some unique advantages. In any case, we are seeing only the fully formed result. What led to that result may be far more complex and interesting.<\/p>\n
A presidential candidate may have gotten where they are by working through the stigma of being labeled a member of a minority, only to end up becoming a tough, seasoned prosecutor. Or perhaps a presidential candidate was born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and got where they are largely by realizing the power of using and disposing of people like tissue paper.<\/p>\n
For every Marcel Proust, who turned their life into an open book, there is someone who is more like a Jay Gatsby, not at all what they seem. Yet you cannot really separate the person from their origin story.<\/p>\n
Alas, those stories are not always easily knowable. I wonder how much it is possible to infer an origin story by sizing up the person that we see before us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When we meet somebody, or read about something they’ve accomplished, we are getting only a thin slice of a much larger picture. That person began somewhere, and then went through a unique set of struggles and obstacles. Or perhaps they benefitted from some unique advantages. In any case, we are seeing only the fully formed … Continue reading “Origin stories, part 2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26719"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26719"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26722,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26719\/revisions\/26722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}