Monday, March 2, 2015

Alive: Telling the Whole Story

In the 1800s, short stories were published in magazine publications as an attempt to describe the wide variety of American culture, not simply to entertain readers. Different writers from different regions of the nation would use these works of fiction to describe the culture, the landscape, the philosophy, the faith, and the people of their regions. When these stories were tied together, they formed a tapestry of America—a picture suspended for the rest of the world to see and marvel at the complexity and depth of American life.

Today, the world is very, very different. We have centralized media, and we all share many of the same influences nationwide and even worldwide. We no longer have gaps so wide between the regional cultures of our nation. Or we see them less, at least, because we tend to focus on the elements we all share. We watch the same movies; we use the same social networking sites; we play the same videogames; we listen to the same music; we even read the same books (generally because television tells us what to read). In many ways, our regions, our cities, our families, even our individual lives are aligned in very similar patterns, not because we are uniform deep down, but because we have the tendency to allow these aspects we all share to consume such large portions of our time.

It's time we get back to examining the differences in our stories and the stories of those around us and discover the ways we can help each other grow. What is it about our individual lives that can contribute to a grander, more interesting story of the world? If we take our eyes off of our finely tuned, incessantly edited, entirely unrealistic “newsfeeds” and really look and listen to the people around us, we might discover that the holistic story of a person is much more complex than the chiseled bits of information we can get in 140 characters or less.

I am not here to slam social networking. It has become an inseparable part of the modern story. I am, however, suggesting that we relegate it to the small position it (along with every other component of our lives) should hold and start telling and experiencing the whole story of humankind.

With that said, here are a few reasons we should all start paying more attention to the stories we are sharing and experiencing in the real world, not just the digital one:
  • People will not care about your life story until your life has affected their story.
The truth is that most people care first and foremost about themselves. Not necessarily in a selfish way, but people first relate to themselves. When it comes to seeing and understanding the world around them, their own minds are ground zero. Their own experiences build the foundation upon which they layer the opinions and experiences of others. They will process everything about you through the lens of their own stories. No one can simply unzip his or her skin, crawl inside of yours, and live life through your eyes for a day. Empathy only goes so far, but we can create environments for relating and growing with people by making positive impacts on their stories.

If we first show a depth of interest in someone’s story by asking about the events, characters, and experiences that have formed the person he or she is today, we are primed to receive enriching responses in addition to inquiries about our own story. But it doesn’t stop there. If we go out of our way to discover how we can contribute positive new experiences and ideas to this person’s story, both stories are changed for the better and changed forever.

The blunt reality is that most people are not inherently interested in you, but many will be interested as soon as you show interest in them. Be the kind of person who takes the initiative. Care about the stories of those around you, so that the whole story can get better. You are the protagonist of your own story, but you might be an antagonist to someone else and not even know it. It is a sobering thought, but you will only be supporting character at best in the stories of all those around you. So, start asking what role you are playing right now in the stories of those you know. What role could you be playing? It matters.
  • You are living a story. Its content is up to you.
Someone someday will tell some aspect of your story. How much of your story, what kind of story it is, and how many people tell it is largely up to you. We need to put some serious thought into the legacies we are leaving behind. It’s obvious that this train of thought isn’t chugging through the minds of many modern Americans. We say we want big things from the future and that we want to make huge impacts on the world. What we forget is that those huge impacts are comprised of single, twenty-four hour days. We write our stories line by line, day by day, second by second, not in large chunks at a time. Each and every moment we live and breathe is a contribution to the overarching legacy we leave behind.

People will speak of the monumental events, the glorious victories, the gut wrenching defeats, the most dramatic episodes of your life. What most stories leave out is the hours upon hours of personal discipline, daily practice, and steady plodding the hero does to reach those lofty aspirations. So many Americans desire the life-defining moments, but disregard the abundance of daily life that those magnificent moments define. We have to come back to a belief in the greatness of small stories: the hardworking men who stay committed to their crafts and the protection and support of their families, the strong, dedicated women who shape our culture with skillful hands, the ordinary people who finish well, even if they don’t finish at the top of the food chain. Some of the most profound stories are not about the people who traveled to distant lands or left footprints on the peaks of the tallest mountains, but the people who learned to love, grow, and build on the humble soil of their youth.

Whatever the story, there is no such thing as too mundane. There is no such thing as an irrelevant story. If you live in the world, you are changing it, like it or not. Your defining moments will be birthed out of your committed life. People will tell of your accolades, but they will know and love you for your consistency.
  • Your story is worth telling.
There are so many people in this world with no idea about the direction they wish to travel. So, instead of plunging into the terrifying world of self-discovery, many of us just pick a person we like or respect (or even worse, a person we fear) and just retrace his or her story line as closely as possible. To be frank, this world doesn’t need a single person twice, no matter how great his achievements or charismatic her personality. This world needs you to be you. There are pages in the history of the world waiting to be filled with your life, not the false life of someone you are attempting to be, or the life someone else wants you to live. You have the right and the responsibility to be unapologetically yourself.

You are the protagonist in your story, and as long as you are alive, you are sitting in the middle of the rising action, the conflict, or the climax of your epic tale. Your story matters; it is leading somewhere. No matter how it started, no matter how it has progressed, if you are reading this, then you have not reached the end. Keep telling it.
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Someone once said, “To be in a viable culture is to be bound in a set of connecting stories…” To be a human being is to do more than tell a story; it is to live a story. We need to strive to become the kind of characters others relate to and learn from. Let’s be the characters with the best character. Let’s stop telling the same story everyone else is telling and live our own. Let’s pry or eyes away from the silver screens long enough to see the golden settings, the colorful symbolism, and shades of theme constituting the backdrop of the greatest tales we will ever tell—our own.