Just the facts

I emailed a friend today whom I haven't seen since high school and asked the typical questions of, "where do you live, who'd you marry, what is your child's age" etc.  She responded with, "My life in a Nutshell"... I expected at least a paragraph or two describing how this or that came to be, what happened, etc., leading up to now.  But instead, she responded with a list of facts such as: high school, college, moved to this place, got married, made this career choice, then this one, divorced, moved, married again, kid.  I found this refreshing and so simple because there were no stories around any of it.  Just the facts.  Why I found this refreshing is because we all tend to weave our stories around things and the past then becomes our present just by the things we're regurgitating and the past does not need to be active any more than today can't be tomorrow.  The more we weave our stories, the more we tend to justify or explain why we got to where we are, or how we got to where we are and all of that is really quite irrelevant, because it's who you are now that matters.  Yes, you could say that you're a product of your past experiences and choices, certainly, but you don't have to continue viewing yourself from the same lens that you've always viewed yourself from, and by telling fewer stories about the past, you give way, or make way, for stories that are more based upon who you've become and the choices you want to make now about who you are.