I often posit that people don't just live their lives in a void, just following some internal guide, but that we live our lives as a story, and implicitly or even explicitly modeled on an external story that we have, over time, internalized.
This is why some stories are so powerful, and why we tell stories and fairy tales and myths to ourselves and to our children -- these stories are lives encapsulated and give us guidelines and themes, some of which we will identify with and begin to live ourselves.
I don't expect anybody here is going to run off into the woods trailing bread crumbs, to ultimately fend off an evil witch to avoid being cooked alive. A lot of the stories we tell are not literal at all, but metaphorical; not true in a facts sense, but true in a heart sense.
And, like the air to the bird and the water to the fish, we may be intimately familiar with our lives, and with stories in general, but we may not connect that our lives are in fact echoes of these stories, and who we are in our life is also our role in that story.
People just are who they are... or that's how it sometimes seems. But some people also notice that they have choices in how they live, and can step outside of their skin and storyline from time to time, to observe and guide themselves into perhaps a better storyline. Maybe in this storyline they don't have to get eaten by the wolf, maybe they can jump over and hang with the lady in her shoe instead.
Or something. It's late. You'll get over the pain of my examples soon enough.
Another interesting point is that everyone is the hero in their story. Darth Maul? Al Capone? Prince Humperdink? Yeah, in his mind, he is doing what needs to be done, and he's the hero of his particular story. Think about it...if you could do better with your life, you would! But forces, internal and external, shape you and guide you, and at each step you make the best decisions you can, heroically or otherwise, even if the outcomes don't always match your desires. If you could have done better, you WOULD have; and maybe next time you will, with the wisdom of experience and the example of hindsight. And, sometimes, with a little help from your friends.
I know I personally wonder about some people who seem to go out of their way to be conscious and unrepentant dicks... but who knows what is really going on in their heads? In some way, it makes sense to them.
Now, what about a person who loses the sense of their character; maybe the writer was too ambitious with them and just lost control over the plotline; or things just up and exploded and all of a sudden, poof! They don't know their role in the plot anymore.
What a terribly disconcerting place that would be... with no internal sense of what decisions to make, what directions to go, what value they add and what complications they might contribute to the plot. It would become quite the imperative for them to find a comfortable role again, to fit themselves in to the big picture somehow. But what if all the good roles are taken? Or if stress is making it difficult to play anything but a bit part, a character actor at best, or "man in black shirt, mob scene 3"? What an ignominious thing....
Anyway, I sure as hell hope my author gets his act together soon. Or, um, for that anonymous hypothetical person. Yeah.