why is such a story important? what does it provide? what does it sustain? perhaps the reason for thinking and discussing dropping it isn't to find another way to maintain it, but to realize that maintenance isn't necessary and, most times, actively impedes a more fruitful and fulfilling life.

In the last few years I have felt my story dropping away and it has seemed disconcerting to have a smaller sense of history. I brought it back, by narrating it to myself.

In the same vein perhaps, or perhaps not, when internal talking began to stop, leaving silence, that was disconcerting too. At first, I couldn't let that be, and spoke in my head. Then I began to get more comfortable with the silences.

The benefit of silence in the head appeared quickly. I began to be able to actually think, in full paragraphs, something all the way thru, solving a problem with no jumping around.

But letting go of one's history...even with no words, the sense of it is there...but when it started dropping away, it was the wordless sense of it. I was entering menopause when it began. Since surgery last fall, I have problems bringing words into speech sometimes, when stressed.

They call it memory loss. Did Steven suggest that something is gained by this loss?

For me the dropping comes from the realisation that the story is not the actual. The story is just "a story" with no meaning and no essential value, and of course the central figure "our hero" is a fictional character with no substance other than the thought of substance.
So who's dropping the story? No one. When it is realised there is no-one really home the story has no specific relevance and becomes a tale like Father Christmas that we tell our kids but know ourselves is not true.
By the way this may be a really good analogy - how much is spent in maintaining the fiction of Father Christmas and for what reason. Our stories are the same, they cost us, and give no real longterm return. :)

>>> Steven and others have talked about dropping the story of “my” life. I wonder does the story require words. Can there be a narrative without words? My own inclination is that yes that is possible as words are just labels for thoughts, feelings and other sensory input. Other opinions? >>>

i agree there is a narrative without words
(taking place now)
instantly the movie nels with jodie foster comes to mind
then i think of the wild (which is where the movie takes place IMHO)
and so i then think of orgasm - which, while a "word,"
is a sensation that can not be described adequately by any word
must be experienced in order to know
then i think of infinite possiblities...
...endless universe...
...and how my brain is nothing more than a sensor that tunes in to a nonlocal omnipresent vibrating field of infinite frequencies...
and then my stories and anyone else's for that matter are boring
that it is our senses that excite and act out the best stories,
which, again, words do not suffice

i do, however, like words
(can you tell?)
especially if poetic, erotic, insiteful, funny...
then again, those are just words

I'd assume the story drops away when you die. Until then, the pages keep turning.

Interesting posts one and all.

I guess what I was trying to get at in the OP was that even without a verbal story, it seems to me there is still a non-verbal one, so I am not sure how one could get away from the "story" as it were, except (as Grant suggested) to disbelieve it. On the other hand, maybe when Steven refers to a "story" he means a verbal one only.