Is how you think of yourself merely an illusion?  Is it merely dependent upon what sort of category you put yourself into? 

A new article from NPR News highlights particular studies that show that this may be the case.

Think of yourself as a secret agent, responsible for the lives of many people and taking on tasks with intelligence and debonair.  Chances are you will begin to think of yourself in this way, so much so that it results in measurable changes in behavior.

This is what the studies by psychologist Adam Galinsky suggest.  That how you categorize yourself leads to how you think of yourself and how you behave.

If you Google search "wise quotes", in about 0.07 seconds you can find 46,400,000 results.  Anything from Plato, Buddha, and Confucius to Jimmy Hendrix and Eisenhower.  People talk about all sorts of things, and if you are famous enough, i.e. played in a movie, been auto-tuned in a popular song, or released a sex tape, then people will tend to listen.  And some people will tend to write these things down and pass them off as wisdom later on.

The Internet provides loads of information. There are pros and cons to this. The pros are that gap between the expert and the average person has significantly shrunk. However, the main con to this is that with all this information it is very easy to fall victim to false data. Different biases, viewpoints, and prejudices can cause information to be skewed. Continuing education can be a dangerous endeavor.

I've always thought the best movies were the ones that had the hero dying at the end. The tale finishes with the fade to black and we are left with a sense of closure, with the satisfaction of knowing that the hero went out like a flame, fighting until the very end. We are not concerned with whether or not he went on to die of old age, no doubt never seeing another adventure. We do not care if his lessons learned actually aided him later on in life or if he just became a lazy drunkard, abandoning his friends and family.

We are not worried because the story is complete. It results in a final climax, leading to the resolution and there are no more questions to be answered. Any question has died with the hero, there is no sense in continued worry.