Tell Me Another Story
In my life, I have had the privilege to work with incredible humans who are deep in humanitarian work, single handedly changing lives for the better every day. They are warriors against the oppression and subjugation of communities that have been impacted by poverty, inequity, violence, and other forms of human injustice & exploitation.
This blog expands on a speech I recently wrote for our Foundation’s annual fundraising event which supports these heroic leaders.
Our lives are about the stories we tell ourselves.
Our histories are less about actual fact, than the stories we weave around the facts, our perception and interpretation of them.
I recently had the chance to listen to a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie where she talked about the danger of a single story.
We are all capable of falling into the danger of a single story. That co-worker who always seems to be late and in a bad mood: a single story might say she is just unreliable and mean, but if we got to know her life, we might discover she alone cares for two disabled parents, works 2 jobs, sleeps 4-5 hours a night to make it all happen, and has a car that is constantly breaking down because it needs repairs she cannot yet afford. Maybe then the fact that she is a little late, a little grumpy, but never truly complains about her life or job, tells us a whole other story.
A single story also tells us a person is bad or good, wrong or right.
Said so eloquently by Chimamanda, the danger of a single story is it fosters stereotypes. It is not that the stories aren’t true, but they are always incomplete, and the danger of that single story is it becomes the only story. It becomes the only lens through which we see and understand the world. It prevents us from seeing the entirety of the picture, or flexibly seeing other sides of the picture.
Given today’s world climate, it seems we have bought into one specific single story, one given to us by Charles Darwin, and that is the story of “the survival of the fittest.” Essentially, it is a story of limited resources and the need to compete, of losers and winners. If we win, we get to survive, and our progeny gets to survive.
It is, at heart, a story about scarcity.
But is this the only story available to us?
I recently came across an anecdote about Margaret Mead. It came across my social media feed, so I don’t know with any certainty that it is true, but I share it because it is a good story.
The story goes: Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The students expected Mead to say it was signs of tools like a fishhook or clay pot. Instead, Mead said it was a “femur - a thigh bone that has been broken then healed.” Mead explained when you break a leg in the animal kingdom, you are doomed to die. You cannot hunt for food or run from predators. Your tribe leaves you and you eventually die. A broken femur that is healed is a sign that someone has taken care of you; carried you to safety, bandaged you up, cared for you. So, according to Mead the first sign of civilization is evidence of compassion, human beings caring for other human beings.
Here is the thing, Darwin didn’t leave us with just a single story. Darwin told us the story of the survival of the fittest, but he also told us a second less known story: a story of the survival of the kindest, survival of the most compassionate. Here is how the other story goes: a community that cares for each other is the one most likely to survive; stronger together.
We need each other - our welfare as a species is bound up in each other. Nothing shows us that more than what is currently going on in the world; the utter destruction of human lives when we choose to be against one another. We are instead, at our best when we are there for one another, when we see each of our stories as part of a web interconnected stories within a larger story: the story of one humanity.
Our leaders tell that story every day in their work. They live the story of survival of the kindest. They know our wellbeing as a human race is bound up in each other’s wellbeing. They understand we need each other, and each person is worthy of a life in which they can thrive.
Our leaders tell the other story, that of beauty found in the stench-filled slums of Nigeria, of the gentle people & lives worth fighting for in Syria. The story of the great gifts of kids crushed in the low-income schools of Philadelphia, or worse, those that have already been incarcerated and branded as “delinquent”. They tell us of the humanity, dreams, and aspirations of kids in rural Uganda and children of tea-pickers in Sri Lanka. They reveal to us the resilience and strength of destitute mothers in Bali who fight unimaginable circumstances to support their children.
They tell stories of equal worth and of equal humanity. It is a new story, not one of scarcity, but the abundance of life and human potential.
It is the ability to see another story, or simply recognize there COULD be another story, that moves our leaders into compassion and kindness instead of competition. From scarcity to abundance. To love instead of hate. To hope instead of hopelessness.
How does any of this relate to you, to me, and to our lives? Maybe we don’t see ourselves as leaders changing the world, but our stories do dictate the level of compassion and understanding we bring into our own relationships and can also drive our day-to-day decisions.
Imagine a relationship based on each person holding a single story of the other. It shouldn’t be hard to imagine because I believe it happens a lot in our relationships. We experience it when people make global assumptions about us based on limited experience or information or bias, or where someone holds an idea of who we are based on who we once were, all of which we may be equally guilty of doing ourselves when we make assumptions about others. A single story might also explain what is happening when each person in a partnership feels unheard or misunderstood. A single story limits our capacity to understand, and to have compassion. It ultimately limits our capacity to connect.
So single stories impact world politics, relationship politics, but the one I want to focus us on to end this blog are the single stories we tell ourselves about…ourselves. These are stories we hold in our own heads that tell us: “I can’t do that,” or “I am not good enough…smart enough…strong enough…whatever enough,” or “I am unlovable.” Stories that say, “I’m too old, I missed my chance,” or “My life is awful.” Or the stories that fill us with self-loathing and make it hard for us to forgive ourselves, “I’m a bad mom,” or “I cannot believe what I did, I am a horrible person,” or “I’m a failure.”
These are the stories that create fixed, singular definitions of who we are. They tell us, “This is who you are and will always be.” These stories limit how we see ourselves and our capacity, and they influence the choices we make in our lives. Limiting stories, limit us.
Here is the thing: whatever we did or did not do, wherever we are currently in our lives, this is not our only story, AND we always have the capacity to write a different one. Maybe I’m not good enough, YET.
How do we change our stories? Ask yourselves questions that can help you examine and reframe your story. Some powerful questions might be:
“Does this story serve me and what I want in my future?”
“Is there another way I can look at it, is there another story I can tell?”
“What else might be true?”
“What brought me here and what can I do differently?”
Author Byron Katie, in what she describes as “The Work” offers a set of four questions that can help us get unstuck from limiting beliefs/thoughts:
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
How do you react when you believe that thought (or story)?
Who would you be without the thought (or story)?
Giving yourself another story opens up possibility. It also allows in choice, perspective, and self-compassion. Compassion is key to our survival as a species, but self-compassion is key to our own thriving.
When we are able to tell a different story about ourselves, one that kind, one that serves our future selves and who we want to be, we are far more likely to be open to different stories of other people. Our perspective and understanding broadens. As does our compassion. And when we are no longer caught in the danger of a single story, who knows…we too may become warriors for change.