ABSTRACT
The significance of being appreciated as an individual person stands out as a prominent feature in the numerous life story narratives I have collected. Across all the differences, it is a lifelong human need to be recognized in a cultural space in a mutual world. To be allowed to be, without having to reject, or cut out the experiences or the narratives we feel are part of our identity, seems crucial. Denial or repression of the past, especially if enforced by others, is, as Charles Taylor argues, quite problematic:
We want our lives to have meaning, or weight, or substance, or to grow towards some fullness, or however the concern is formulated that we have been discussing in this section. But this means our whole lives. If necessary, we want the future to “redeem” the past, to make it part of a life story which has sense or purpose, to take it up in a meaningful unity … To repudiate my childhood as unredeemable in this sense is to accept a kind of mutilation as a person; it is to fail to meet the full challenge involved in making sense of my life.
