#154 - The Problem With Facts
(don't worry, this isn't about fake news promise)
This is Adventures in Storytelling your weekly note with resources, insights, and actionable tools for better communication through storytelling. Heavy on the insights today, friend. Enjoy.
I started this newsletter three years ago because I had an idea I wanted to share. A beautiful little kernel of a thought that I knew even as I was beginning was bigger than a weekly newsletter. The expanse of it began at the centre of what it means to be human. I knew I had resources and practical tools to share around that idea, ones I had seen help build relationships, brands, businesses, and contribute to culture in real ways. I also knew there were people out there who this idea affected everyday yet who were unaware of its magic and what it could do in their lives—what it could change—if they learned to harness it.
A story is a powerful thing. I say it or write it at least once a week in my storytelling workshops. But as a writer, I thought it was important to show how this idea—the idea that stories are what make us human and make a life—lived beyond words on a page. I wanted to show how it lived in tangible ways all around us.
We are connected through stories. We understand ourselves and each other better through stories.
Facts, quite frankly, can be boring. Yes one plus one equals two. And? So what? But what if I told you about an old woman who lived in a small village in a desert town in a country time had mostly forgotten and every day she struggled to learn math so she could trade her wares at the local market and get a fair price for the pottery she and her young daughter made? One day her daughter, who had watched her mother struggle to write out the numbers she’d found in an old book in the market, frustrated with her mother’s progress, she grabbed a mound of clay from in front of her mother and shouted, “ONE” then she ripped the mound apart in a fit of true and desperate frustration and threw the result to the floor at her mother’s feet and yelled “TWO.” Her mother paused, and the girl who was a respectful daughter and had never raised her voice gasped covering her mouth shocked by her own behaviour. “Oh,” her mother laughed, cracking a grin that showed her missing molar, “it’s so simple.” And grabbed the two mounds at her feet and began breaking them up and counting and adding and continuing to teach herself as her daughter watched in relief at not being punished for her disrespect. The next week at the market the woman was able to haggle and get more for their wares than they ever had, using her mounds of clay—now fired into marbles—to help her as she worked.
Hopefully one plus one equalling two has new context for you, a rush of frustration, mounds of clay, a toothless grin, and new livelihood for a family you’ll never meet. THAT is what stories do. They convince our brains in a way few things outside of drugs and alcohol can.
I eventually quit my job to spend more time with stories, and built a business that includes conducting team workshops to help others share their stories and work each day now to make stories more real in the lives of not just you, but any person who’s interested and needs a bit of help.
That’s why any week that I’m feeling a little hard on myself or down about this thing I believe so fundamentally in and whether or not it makes a difference, I remember that this newsletter and sharing it with you and anyone else reading, is part of my story. Part of the words I share about myself, my experience, and that of others in hopes that you come to understand yourself and your story in new ways as you connect with mine for a few minutes every Tuesday.
So not only do I write this to share stories and tools to make your stories better, but because I want you to get inspired to also seek stories in the people and world around you. To learn from them, to find humanity in the strangers you otherwise wouldn’t know and hopefully in our small ways we use these stories to make the world a place we can be proud to call home.
A Story Well Told
Every week at some point I open up my phone and search for a purple app with a black symbols on it that spells out the name CHANI. It’s an astrology app. I don’t know if I “believe” in astrology the way Christians “believe” in Jesus, but I follow it and I’m interested in how the cosmos move and how that movement may affect how we show up in our lives. This app takes that interest to a whole new level because every week it opens me up to the stories and possibilities of the week through the lens of the stars. This week was especially…interesting for all that is going on in the stars is reflected in so much of the turmoil we’re experiencing in the world. Here’s a look into a small snippet of what is in the app:
(no you don’t need to buy a subscription to the app to explore this kind of story, just follow along on social and have fun with it—I mean, if that’s your thing).
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