A redemption story starts off crappy and ends best-“That awful travel in the course of time delivered us better because a household”-when you’re a contamination tale really does the contrary-“The newest sail was unbelievable up until all of us had dinner toxicity.” That have redemption layouts in a person’s lifetime story is associated with higher well-are, if you are toxic contamination templates usually correspond with poorer mental health.
Many people have some smaller stories of each type sprinkled throughout their greater life story, though a person’s disposition, culture, and environment can influence which they gravitate to. People can also see the larger arc of their lives as redemptive or contaminated, and redemption in particular is a popular, and particularly American, narrative. “Evolving from the Puritans to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Oprah Winfrey … Americans have sought to author their lives as redemptive tales of atonement, emancipation, recovery, self-fulfillment, and upward social mobility,” McAdams writes in an summary of existence-story browse. “The stories speak of heroic individual protagonists-the chosen people-whose manifest destiny is to make a positive difference in a dangerous world, even when the world does not wish to be redeemed.”