And it is still easy to catch oneself talking in those terms.
The piece, about the creation of a social networking site, is heavy on the technology, but one catches oneself wishing that technology didn't make for the most vivid character in a play that still involves people, Jason Zinoman writes.
It is impossible to see oneself objectively.
It is powered by a more complicated urge to whip round and catch sight of oneself unawares, to portal back 20 years with the clarity of distance and say, oh, that's who I was.
Such agency requires a sense of oneself, as intimately caught up in and influential upon the lives and wellbeing of others, as a part of communities and with interests and allegiances that transcend disciplinary and patient/professional boundaries.
Being "in the story" is a meditation term for getting caught in a repeating narrative about oneself that feels deeply true but in fact is just habit -- the result of psychological conditioning.
One loses all sense of quality and meaning if one gets caught up in what one is trying to do oneself".
Following the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Hulbert maintains that it was being caught in "the flow," the feeling of the sudden loss of oneself in an activity, that preserved Lang Lang's sanity: "The prize always beckoned, but Lang was finding ways to get lost in the process".
On the surface (meaning, seen through the eyes of the self caught up in a negative reaction), resistance to an unwanted revelation about oneself makes "sense" -- as when we "eject" an intruding pest from our house.
To read the transcript of the trial of Mr. Butts (who once was caught jumping a turnstile, his only previous brush with the law) is to immerse oneself in the frightening reality of a criminal justice system gone haywire -- a system that simply closed its eyes to the most elementary aspects of truth and falsity, guilt and innocence.
