Object for Identification

When I was a child, my mother told me stories about my grandfather, who I never met. Most of the time she showed an object to illustrate and bring credibility to these stories. In this way she created a model about my grandfather on which I based my origin. But what if my mother would have given me different objects, illustrating the same stories ? It appears that we identify ourselves with objects, starting from the relation we have with them, but not necessarily starting from the object itself. These relations with objects are personal. Design can be quite defining, trying to fix the relations that we have with objects. Therefore, my proposal is to design objects that allow self-reflection and free exploration.