Seeing experience through just one pair of eyes, or just from private recordings or from relating experience with just one voice are each limiting factors in learning. It was only with the recording of stories, that they became fixed and permanent creations. Before stories were recorded, they were 're-mixed' at each telling. Such stories were fluid, living and ever-changing. People can more readily learn to change and develop if they see their own life stories as fluid and open-ended, rather than as stories that were fixed at some point in the past.
Stories enslave or liberate depending on whether they are fixed or evolving.
The making and telling of stories is often seen as something that other people do. In this way of thinking, stories might be for 'reading', 'hearing' or 'watching', but as for 'creating' or 'telling' stories, these are things that other 'more talented' people do. Such an attitude leads to people getting used to being bit players in other people's stories, and they become the victims of a reality that others impose. Personal growth remains at a low ebb until people are able to appreciate that alternative versions of reality are possible, and that they themselves can create credible stories and can be the co-authors of reality. This exchanging and adjusting of perspectives is central to a healthy and developmental reviewing process.