Archives for posts with tag: importance of stories

No Story, No Fans – a review

November 8, 2011 //

No Story, No Fans is available on Amazon as an e-book

If I don’t have a story, I won’t have fans. I believe Raf Stevens when he delivers this message in dozens of ways, through dozens of captivating stories and through concrete steps to find and deliver that story. I believe him because I know what he says is true. I know it in the only way one can truly know anything, through direct experience.

I wish I had had a copy of No Story, No Fans when I was floundering to reinvent myself as an organizational narrative consultant (aka community developer, though that’s not how I thought of myself). Annette Simmons held my hand, with her Story Factor. David Armstrong led me too, with his Managing By Storying Around.

Mostly I felt like a lonely charlatan, waving the flag of storytelling without really knowing how to make the leap from performing storyteller to organizational narrative consultant. I managed, and even succeeded, but it was a scary journey.

Earning trust by demonstrating it

Things are different now. A lot of books and Web sites explore what storytelling means within the context of defining a vision, conveying it, and trying to turn it into sales. And sales are obviously important. A company with fabulous stories that operates in the red is going to sink.

Raf talks a lot about trust. That’s what his subtitle refers to: “Build Your Business through Stories that Resonate. Using the power of corporate storytelling to create loyal customers, fans, and friends.”

He earned my trust right off the bat. In an era of smartphones, I don’t even carry a cell phone. When I’m away from my right arm, er, computer, I don’t want a leash. So when I clicked on the PDF of Raf’s book and saw all the QR codes, I bristled. “Oh, yeah. He’s going to make me feel like an outsider.”

I was wrong. If I’d had a smartphone, I could have pointed it at those squiggly squares and called up fascinating Web sites. Instead, I accidentally moved the cursor over the first one and was startled by a dialog box asking me if I trusted the link or wanted to block it.

That Raf Stevens! So smart. He wanted even semi-Luddites like me to enter the realm of wonder. I ended up clicking on every link. Darn you, Raf Stevens! I’m busy. I don’t have time for all this Web wandering, but your links were so good I was afraid I’d regret not clicking on any one of them.

So here I am, weeks after accepting Raf’s invitation to download his book in exchange for a review, just starting to formulate a response to a book that makes me want to rewind the clock and re-start my consulting career with No Story, No Fans in hand.

A generous book

One thing that leaps out for me, in reading the book, is generosity. Raf gives a lot away. Stories, links, ideas, tips, resources. He just keeps dishing them out, some within the text itself and others a click away. By the time I start Part I: Trading Stories, I’m already feeling as if I’ve stumbled onto a gift exchange. He has already demonstrated his advice to first give something away, to engage emotionally, and to promote trust by promoting other people’s stories.

Partway through Chapter 2, “Flipping Your Script!”, two sentences stop me in my tracks:

Most communication nowadays fails to connect and is not trustworthy because it is too descriptive of situations and facts instead of sharing actual stories about what occurred. That is the script that needs flipping.

I think maybe Raf got hold of the first reports I did for clients when I started my community development career. I was so afraid they would find out I was really a storyteller in consultant’s clothing they wouldn’t trust my work. I overwhelmed them with numbers and facts and insider language so they could see I knew what I was doing.

Only thing was, it was never the heavyweight data that worked. It was always the stories. I could have spared a lot of trees if I’d had Raf’s book to hold my hand while I was learning the ropes.

So I feel like cheering when he writes:

It is tempting to continue to use terms like internal branding, positioning, brand voice, brand identity and so on, while explaining the power of story and storytelling in relation to brand and organizations. Many business leaders are more familiar with these terms than they are with storytelling. Storytelling is for wimps, right? But I am not giving in. We need to flip the script!

Make room for this book

Raf doesn’t try to impose one good model of storytelling. Instead, through dozens of examples, some solid advice, and some well-formulated tips, he encourages readers to find their own storytelling voices. That makes the book useful to a wide range of audiences in both the corporate and non-profit worlds. The book will hold an important place alongside books by Annette Simmons, Stephen Denning, Peter Guber, and Lori Silverman, but it will occupy its own niche.

The field of storytelling books has a lot of entries these days, but No Story, No Fans proves not only was there room for one more. There was a need for this book.

[Note: You can read the first part free on the Web site.]

Tags business narrative, importance of stories, organizational narrative, Organizational storytelling, role of stories, storytelling in nonprofits

Categories Business narrative, Organizational storytelling, The importance of storytelling

US debt crisis as a clash of stories

July 27, 2011 //

Children's museum tug of war, Photo by Paul J. Everett, Flickr Creative Commons

I’ve been listening to politicians from the left and right as they tell their versions of debt in the U.S. The right insists no agreement is possible without a constitutional amendment capping debt. The left insists no agreement is possible without raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Each side claims the other’s story is a false interpretation of the way things really work.

I confess bias toward the left. The gap between rich and poor in the U.S. is the worst in the world, and it keeps on widening. The trickle-down story, where leaving money in the hands of corporations and the wealthiest ensures jobs for everyone else, has proven fictional but still has incredible staying power.

It’s clear the U.S. needs a new and healthier story of how government should function in a democratic society. The minimal-government right is suspicious of anything that gives power to those not in the producing sector, as if roads, hospitals, schools, libraries, and parks were not of benefit to everyone. They are suspicious of all regulations, as if industry would, on its own, stop polluting our streams, land and air and poisoning our bodies.

No side has a corner on The One True Story. Life is far too complex for that. However, it seems to me that any country in which the predominant story is focused more on accumulation of wealth than on egalitarian principles is doomed to failure.

An article published on Oakland Local last December said of the need for viable stories, “In a world so out of balance, we need landmarks and milestones to help us see the way forward. Narrative is like a series of virtual cairns that help us stay on the path.”

May the U.S. build new cairns before once again bringing the world to its financial knees.

Tell it again, please

June 24, 2011 //

The two-room school was on the river side of Highway 97, about halfway between Wenatchee and Chelan. Fruit trees in central Washington were covered with the blossomed promise of a good crop.

Orondo was too small to offer much more than housing for farm workers and a handful of other families. Their tiny settlement was strung along the east bank of the Columbia River.

Orondo is in central Washington's fruit-growing region.

A quarter of a century ago there weren’t more than sixty children in the school. Kindergarten through third grade met in one room. Grades four through six had their own teacher in the other room. When I parked outside the school, curious children ran up. They knew the storyteller was coming and greeted me warmly.

I told stories to the younger classes, then to the older group. They were sponges, absorbing the stories through every pore. They were so eager, so responsive I was as entranced by the stories as they were. And then it was over, and I had promises to keep in other schools.

Two years later I toured the same schools in central and eastern Washington. Once again, I turned my vehicle into the small parking lot. Once again, curious children ran up to greet the visitor and escort me into the school.

I started with the younger children and told them a whole new set of stories, ones I knew I hadn’t pulled out of the hat for my first visit. Then I joined the older group. Two-thirds of them had been in the younger group two years earlier. I was eager to tell them stories that would be new to them, more challenging, more suited to their growing maturity.

They would have none of it. “Tell us about the hen and the giant. We want to hear about the giant pumpkin.” And so it went, story after story. After the fourth and fifth graders had heard the stories they remembered, the sixth graders insisted on hearing the ones they had heard in fourth grade. Forty-five minutes stretched to an hour, then ninety minutes, until I finally had to stop because the school day was nearing its end.

The children taught me an important lesson that day. I was still a fairly new storyteller and assumed audiences always wanted to hear new material. I was feverishly adding stories to my repertoire so as to never repeat one to a group I’d performed for before.

Stuff and nonsense. When we hear a song that stirs us, a melody that haunts us, we want to hear it again and again. We learn the words, sing it in the shower, belt it out as we drive, buy the track.

The same is true of stories. When they resonate, we want to travel that path again, and not just when we are children.

Years ago, Professor Spencer Shaw told me children want the same book read to them over and over because “the children know what’s going to happen, but the characters don’t”. The children in the two-room Orondo school knew what was going to happen in those stories. They also knew the characters didn’t. So I sent my mind back into the world of those earlier stories. Together, the children and I found out.

Tags Classroom storytelling, importance of stories, power of stories, Storytelling in schools

Categories Storytelling in schools, The art of storytelling

Chain the muse to the desk and get the job done

May 24, 2011 //

Here in Kelowna the Okanagan Institute hosts sessions at the Bohemian Café. They feature the talented people who call our valley home. One week it might be a panel talking about sustainable building design. Another week it could be about pilgrimage or food security or laughter or music.

Recently I had a chance to be one of three people exploring storytelling as a healing art. Russ Dionne showed up to videotape the session. The café’s white noise was a non-stop rumble, but the videos (Artists Celebrate the Creative Spirit through the Gift of Storytelling) have value for anyone interested in personal narrative. I am a firm believer that everyone on the planet has stories worth hearing. That’s the seed I was planting in my part of the program.

Parts of the talk I’ve written about on Story Route: Exquisite silence about the way the room goes still when we fall under the enchantment of a story. Digging in the treasure box of memories about the role of stories as we age.

Most of the talk was related to my current focus, which is on the narrative legacy that is the most valuable bequest we can leave behind. Every time I move (and I seem to do that a lot), I shed “stuff”. What I never leave behind are the years of letters, photographs, journals, and digital backups. They’re what I would grab in an emergency, what I would mourn if they were lost.

People are fond of saying, “I could write a book…”, as if writing were a snap, something they could dash off and will some day. My challenge to the people at the café, and to anyone who harbours that dream, is to chain the muse to the desk and get the job done. Today is a good day to start.

Some of my favorite companions on the personal-stories journey might inspire you too:

Hannah Hinchman, whose A Life in Hand: Creating the Illuminated Journal transformed my journal keeping from a litany of woe to a celebration of each day’s gifts
Patti Digh, whose Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally is a visual delight, a reading treasure, and a source of inspiration
Carolyn Heilbrun, whose Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty gave me the quote that inspired me to start Catching Courage http://catchingcourage.com : “Women, I believe, search for fellow beings who have faced similar struggles, conveyed them in ways a reader can transform into her own life, confirmed desires the reader had hardly acknowledged—desires that now seem possible. Women can catch courage from the women whose lives and writings they read, and women call the bearer of that courage friend.”
Christina Baldwin, Storycatcher: Making Sense Of Our Lives through the Power and Practice Of Story is a volume I dip into repeatedly, always finding ideas that stir my thinking.

I hope you’re all gathering and sharing the stories that are uniquely yours. Only you can create the legacy of your time here on the planet.

Tags importance of stories, Personal narratives, role of stories, writing to remember

Categories Personal narratives, The importance of storytelling

Toy naming and the stories of children

May 17, 2011 //

A toy is an empty space, waiting for a child to fill it with stories. Photo from nerissa's ring Flickr photostream

The brown-eyed five-year-old proudly held up her new doll. As always, I asked what her new companion’s name was. You’ll know this was a while back when I tell you her response: “Strawberry Shortcake”.

Children in the K-3 school where I spent my last two years as a school librarian loved to show off their new doll, plastic duck, stuffed animal, or train engine. I always oohed and ahed appropriately, and I always asked what they had named it. I can’t remember a single time when they had given it a name they hadn’t heard in a commercial for it.

I’d never had children, but I figured not re-naming toys gave story-making power to the corporations that created them. My job was to return that power to the children.

“Does she have another name? A special name you gave her?”

“No. She’s Strawberry Shortcake.”

“What does she like to eat? What’s her favourite game? Does she sleep in her shoes? Does she wear her t-shirts inside out?”

Question by question, I’d encourage the children to create a story about their new toy. Give it character, eccentricities, preferences, secrets only the child could know. Some gave up quickly. They couldn’t imagine a life for the toy that existed outside the confines of the marketing story. I was sad for them but hoped all the stories they heard during their library visits would fill them with enough colourful details to stir their imaginations.

Others entered into the game, whether quickly or reluctantly. After they had answered a dozen questions, I’d say to them, “That doesn’t sound like a Strawberry Shortcake (or whatever other name they’d given). Ask her if she has another name she likes better, a name that is hers alone, a name she’d like you to call her.”

For the children, the new names became signals for the toys’ stories. For me, they were a way to combat the weighty power of marketing by encouraging children to believe in the power of their own story-making abilities. They were born with them, but advertising had been having its way with them, robbing them of some of their belief in their own creativity.

My insistence on children’s giving names and stories to their toys was a tiny gesture in the big scheme of things. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Tags Classroom storytelling, Educational storytelling, importance of stories, power of stories, role of stories, Storytelling in schools

Categories Storytelling in schools, The importance of storytelling

Medicine circles back to stories

April 27, 2011 //

Doctor and patient in City Hospital Tuberculosis Division, 1927 (Item 2721, Engineering Department Photographic Negatives (Record Series 2613-07), Seattle Municipal Archives, from Flickr Creative Commons)

The invention of the stethoscope spelled the end of story-based medicine. That claim caught my attention when I was listening to White Coat Black Art on CBC. Dr. Brian Goldman, the show’s host, was interviewing Stanley Reiser, a medical historian.

In his 2009 book, Technological Medicine: The Changing World of Doctors and Patients, Reiser wrote, “Before stethoscopes, the coin of evaluation was words—the doctor learned about an illness from the patient’s story of the events and sensations marking its passage.”

Diagnoses were often made via letters. Patients wrote detailed descriptions of their symptoms, the remedies they had tried, and their emotional state. Not every physician was comfortable with this. Some complained of patients’ inabilities to accurately describe their illnesses. Others chided doctors for subtly guiding the narratives and missing the correct diagnosis.

In 1816 René Laennic, a 35-year-old French doctor, invented an instrument that would allow him to listen to a woman’s chest without violating her modesty. The stethoscope quickly became popular and “took the mantle of illness out of the hands of patients and placed it in the doctor’s orbit.” (Reiser)

When Dr. Goldman interviewed him for White Coat Black Art, Reiser said the stethoscope “led to a seismic shift in how doctors evaluated illness and their relationship with the patient, which changed as they became more interested in the evidence from the body and less interested in the evidence from the story.” The new technology “made doctors more interested in the physical findings of disease than in the life of the patient.”

Reiser is concerned that over-reliance on technology has lessened physicians’ openness to the patient as a whole person rather than a collection of symptoms. But there’s a movement toward storytelling in medicine, generally referred to as “narrative medicine”.

Narrative medicine is, in many ways, a return to pre-stethoscope days. Dr. Rita Charon, who coined the phrase in 2000, describes it as “medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories”. In “What to do with stories: The sciences of narrative medicine”, she writes, “Whether sick or well, the reader of an illness narrative is summoned by the author to join with the teller—to form community that can combat the isolation of illness.” [Canadian Family Physician August 2007 vol. 53 no. 8 1265-1267]

Illness is a lonely journey, particularly when it’s chronic or when the impact is life threatening. It’s lonely for the person who is ill and for those who are caretakers. Narrative medicine takes this into account, placing the illness in the context of a life rather than the narrow confines of symptoms.

Tags importance of stories, storytelling in health care

Categories Healing power of stories, Health, Meaning of stories, Organizational storytelling, The importance of storytelling

Answering the call of stories

April 19, 2011 //

Stumbling onto What’s Your Calling? was like finding myself in a meeting where the chemistry is right and the conversation flows freely. So when we connected on Twitter (@whatsURcalling), and Erin Williams (Engagement Campaign Manager for The Calling & What’s Your Calling?) asked me to participate in a blog tour, I jumped at the chance to try to articulate my calling: stories.

What’s Your Calling? is sponsoring a Calling Dream Kit contest. Find details at the bottom of this post.

“Where your talents and the needs of the world cross lies your calling.” ~ Aristotle

From eavesdropping to storytelling

One advantage of being a quiet, well-behaved child was that I could listen for hours to stories not meant for young ears. I could color or play with dolls while adults within earshot spun tales about betrayals, triumphs, furtive meetings, secrets. I never tired of the stories and stored them away in my heart.

I didn’t think of their hold on me as a calling until I was in my thirties. I credit a kindergartener with helping me see I could turn that fascination into a career. Her rapt attention as I told a story to her class threw me headlong into storytelling, first as a school librarian and then through twists and turns in my professional life.

I discovered I could take the stories I’d heard, read or lived and give them back and that sometimes people listening to or reading the stories found a measure of healing in them. I also learned I could nudge people, and even organizations, to believe in the power of their own stories to heal themselves, others, their communities.

Finding healing in stories

Isak Dinesen is often quoted as saying, "All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell them as a story." (Photo of Cathryn in Queenstown, New Zealand)

In Storytelling: Imagination and Faith William Bausch nailed my calling in two sentences: “When a man [sic] comes to you and tells you your own story, you know that your sins are forgiven. And when you are forgiven, you are healed.”

When I began to contemplate sharing stories in the public sphere of blogs, I chose this quote from Carolyn Heilbrun, in Last Gift of Time, to guide me: “Women, I believe, search for fellow beings who have faced similar struggles, conveyed them in ways a reader can transform into her own life, confirmed desires the reader had hardly acknowledged—desires that now seem possible. Women can catch courage from the women whose lives and writings they read, and women call the bearer of that courage friend.”

Though both quotes are gender specific, I re-write them in my mind to include any hearts that vibrate when touched by stories.

A legacy of stories

My calling is to create a legacy of stories. I’ve done that in many ways during my meandering career as teacher, librarian, storyteller, farmer, musician, rancher, consultant, community developer. Now I’m doing it as a writer, primarily through three blogs: Catching Courage, Story Route, and Crossroads.

Stories are the one thing of value I can pass on. Not just my own stories but others that inspire and teach me. I write and tell stories because they have the power to stitch together sorrows, passions, joys, and confusions. I piece them together to lay a quilt of comfort over a wounded world.

In a 1990 interview with Common Boundary magazine, Alice Walker said, “Stories differ from advice in that, once you get them, they become a fabric of your whole soul. That is why they heal you.”

And so I write—and occasionally tell—stories. They are my most valuable possessions, my life’s calling. This is where I find meaning, working to create a healing legacy of stories.

“If we look upon our experiences as assets, we must manage to preserve or transfer those assets to other people before we die or they dissolve in the grave with us.” Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper

Calling Dream Kit contest:
You can follow the blog tour on the What’s Your Calling? Facebook Page. Subscribe for a chance to win a Calling Dream Kit including $200 in Amazon.com gift credit to buy supplies you’ll need as you pursue your calling, a DVD and poster of The Calling, and an hour of coaching to help plan your project and the chance to share your calling with the community.

What’s Your Calling? explores notions of “calling” from both religious and secular perspectives, or what people feel most passionate about doing with their lives – and why.

Two of my personal favorites on this wonderful site are:

Poet Ruth Forman on The Power and Magic of Language, who says: “Have the courage to address those things inside of you that you’re afraid to address. So, for instance, as a writer, have the courage to write about those things that you’re afraid to write about, that you wouldn’t even want to admit to yourself because if you can conquer that in yourself, you can probably conquer everything else that’s going on around you.”
T.J. Anderson, talented composer who says in Any man or woman in a bathtub can give you a tune, “The reason people doubt is they’re seeking perfection. I sought to be the best I could be at a particular time and am still seeking that.”

Tags importance of stories, Personal narratives, power of stories, role of stories, writing to remember

Categories Healing power of stories, Memoir, Organizational storytelling, Personal narratives, The importance of storytelling

The truth behind the truth

March 23, 2011 //

Lately I’ve been feeling like a very small dot on a big, troubled planet. The stories I hear on awakening or while preparing a meal are like vultures pecking at my peace of mind.

We all know the headlines: Devastating earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan. Floods in Australia. Tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. Protests in Egypt. Civil war in Libya. Acidification and plastic pollution of our oceans. Peak oil. Climate change. Drought. Hunger. Disease. Fear. Violence. Corruption.

So I was pulled up short when Liz Weir, a dear friend and one of the best storytellers on the planet, sent this to me:

You storytellers know how to describe peace. We need you more than ever.

I am a journalist. I get paid for writing about wars and other disasters.

You storytellers know the truth behind what we other people think is the
truth.

Tell us all about it!

Winfried Dulisch

Winfried is a talented writer and musician. He is also an astute critic. He has experienced the spell of Liz’s stories. He understands that in the space between words and listeners something important happens. And that something is truth.

Not the capital T kind that True Believers of any ilk use as a club. More the subtle kind of truth that sneaks up on us and startles us into awareness.

So many times I’ve been jolted upright by a story. Epiphanies emerge from folk tales, myths, and legends. They rise out of history, family stories, and dinner conversation. And, yes, they pop up in the news.

Just this past week I’ve been reminded of that. Bombarded by death, loss, destruction and war, I have found refreshment in the well of stories.

When workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant began exposing themselves to dangerous levels of radiation, I remembered the story Dr. Wangari Maathai told in the movie Dirt! While all the animals of the forest fled a raging fire, the hummingbird flew back and forth, filling her beak with water, pouring it on the fire. She persisted when the other animals mocked her puny efforts. Matthai said she will be like the hummingbird: “I will do the best I can.”

A video about factory farming plunged me into despair, but another about a dog who would not leave his injured canine pal buoyed me. The two friends were rescued by compassionate volunteers. The injured dog was taken to the vet, the faithful pal to a no-kill shelter. The video went viral, and money poured in to help other animals in need of rescue.

A couple days ago Dayna from Bella Coola sent me the link to Singing Our Treasures Back to Life. She cautioned me to start at the bottom, with the first entry, and work my way up. The blog has only a few entries, every one of them powerful.

Six young men from the Heiltsuk community traveled from Bella Bella, British Columbia, to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The young men brought the spirit of the Heiltsuk people to objects taken from their land long ago. Their intent was “to sing these treasures back to life”.

The whole account is deeply moving. I will never again look at items in a museum in quite the same way. And so I take to heart this message from the blog:

“Please carry this story with you. It’s your story now, and I want you to share it. Celebrate with us. We uphold you and uplift you – you have witnessed something that is of great importance to us. The strength of our story, like the strength of our people, will not diminish. We hold it in a sacred space within us – a space of narrative, memory and language – a space of touch and sound and light – a space that is shared between all of us, and you, and everyone who reads this. We will remain strong together.”

Strong together. Yes. That’s it. Our world’s not just a sorry old place. It is mysterious and beautiful. Our lives have meaning. For every act of corruption, violence or betrayal, there are thousands more of generosity, love or compassion.

We must tell those stories. We must live those stories. We must pass them on.

Stories are a sacred legacy.

Stories are our truth.

Tags importance of stories, power of stories, role of stories

Categories Healing power of stories, Social myths, The importance of storytelling

Stop the Newspeak stories

March 9, 2011 //

When the U.S. FedBizOpps (Federal Business Opportunities) Web site advertises a workshop entitled, “Analysis and Decomposition of Narratives in Security Contexts”, it’s time to face up to the shadow side of storytelling. Since the workshop took place February 28, 2011, I figure the workshop URL may disappear any time. So let me assure you that even if the link is broken when you click on it, this workshop is for real.

The full title was “Stories, Neuroscience and Experimental Technologies (STORyNET): Analysis and Decomposition of Narratives in Security Contexts.” The hosting agency was the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Here’s the description:

This workshop is intended as a precursor to exploring the neurobiological mechanisms which undergird narrative processing so as to establish fertile ground for connecting our understanding of the neuropsychology of stories with models, simulations and sensors salient to security concerns. To this end, the workshop will focus on surveying theories of narrative, understanding what role they play in security domains, and establishing the state of the art in story analysis and decomposition frameworks.

If you remember Orwell’s 1984, you may recognize an unnerving similarity to the Ministry of Truth and its Fiction Department. One of the first things the novel’s government had to do was normalize a new language. Newspeak turned ordinary stories on their head.

Wandering through the DARPA Web site, where war is normalized as nothing more alarming than business strategizing, I got to thinking about George W. Bush on “weapons of mass destruction”, Sarah Palin putting cross hairs on the districts of pro-health care reform Democrats or the Harper government’s decision to scrap the long-form census because it was “coercive and intrusive”.

What all three examples have in common is a defective story with serious ramifications. Soldiers and civilians continue to die in Iraq. Palin supports powerful forces working to keep Americans from having universal health care. The Harper government’s decision to scrap the longer census means there will be inadequate information on which to base policy and funding decisions. When questioned about their actions, Bush, Palin and Harper all created new stories to explain how right they were.

George Orwell explained how it works in his appendix to 1984, “Principles of Newspeak”:

When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the last link with the past would have been severed. History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there, imperfectly censored, and so long as one retained one’s knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to read them. In the future such fragments, even if they chanced to survive, would be unintelligible and untranslatable.

I believe in the power of story but acknowledge its knife cuts both ways. We owe it to our children and to the seventh generation to avoid Newspeak, to tell stories that shed light, that inform, that inspire and that, ultimately, lead to a better world.

Tags importance of stories, meaning of stories, power of stories, role of stories

Categories Meaning of stories, Organizational storytelling, The importance of storytelling

Digging in the treasure box of memories

March 2, 2011 //

“I can’t tell a story,” he said. “My memory’s gone. I’m just here to listen”

The man sat on his motorized wheelchair, in a workshop on telling stories. I remember his jaunty cap and the fringe of grey hair around his ears and the back of his neck. We were at the Tulsey Town Storytelling Festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was giving the group some tips on crafting a compelling tale from the flotsam and jetsam of their lives.

We did some exercises to stir their creative juices. I wanted them to leave with one good story they could wow their friends with, some gem mined from the ore of their lives. We worked at chipping away extraneous detail until only the shining core remained.

They all tried and most were eager to share their polished stones. The man in the wheelchair listened. His eyes were lively. But he couldn’t handle any of the exercises. They were tapping into the labyrinth of his short-term memory. That part of his brain was a jumble. Words dropped in and rolled off into dead ends or got lost around corners.

He dug a gem from the treasure box of his life (Photo courtesy of Sam at Photos8.com, whose work is brilliant)

Still, he laughed and nodded and sighed. I could see he was enjoying himself but was disappointed he couldn’t participate. At the end of the workshop, I learned how wrong my definition of participation had been.

He looked at me with a mischievous grin. “I love listening to stories, but I didn’t think I could ever be a storyteller. Now I know I can.” Others had stopped to talk so he ignored my startled expression and rolled away.

A story swap ended the day. That’s where anyone with a short story to tell can sign up for the chance to share a tale with the kind of receptive audience that flocks to storytelling festivals.

Our man in the wheelchair motored to the front. When all eyes were on him, he said, “Until today I believed I could never be a storyteller. My short-term memory is gone. I thought I had to learn stories in order to tell them. Now I know I can dig in the treasure box of my memories.”

That man dug a gem out of the treasure box of his memories. His short story had us holding our sides with laughter. The storytellers in the audience were wide-eyed with admiration. Here was a natural spinner of tales, a weaver of words, a teller who held us spellbound.

He also had an audience. I don’t know if he found other audiences after that day. I hope so. He was a gifted storyteller.

I thought of him yesterday when I ran across the report of a study carried about by University of Missouri Researchers. Patients with mild to moderate dementia increased their social interaction and were happier, an effect that lasted for weeks after the storytelling sessions. They were using the TimeSlips Creative Storytelling program, designed to tap into the imagination of Alzheimer’s patients. TimeSlips discovered that people with mid to late stages of memory loss may no longer be able to string together a story with beginning, middle and end. But they still have a treasure box of memories, full of shining stones.

We all have a treasure box. One of the greatest gifts we can give each other is to share our shining stones.