storytelling – Lion's Whiskers

The Art of Misdirection

admin — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A skilled magician is a usually a master of misdirection. While keeping the audience’s attention focused on something that seems important but isn’t, the magician is accomplishing a clever deception just to the side. The cognitive bias known as “inattentional blindness” or “perceptual blindness” causes our brains to ignore vast quantities of sensory information. If we are vigilantly focused on one thing, this inattentional blindness can be even stronger. (I like to this this is why an almost-13-year-old with a paintbrush in her hand doesn’t hear my voice saying it’s time to set the table for dinner).

Inattentional blindness is a characteristic of the human brain that storytelling and storytellers can really use to advantage, and parents often do it quite naturally. In fact, most parents will quickly develop a whole bag of tricks for distracting a child’s attention from something that is happening or just about to happen. From bright noisy toys to the spell-binding “Once upon a time,” misdirection tends to narrow the focal range and shut out the rest of the world – for a while.

And yet while the attention is focused, the world is still there. It doesn’t actually go away, and we may absorb those sensory inputs without being aware. Here is a story my mother told me once that made a deep impression on me. Because time is part of the our physical experience, patience is associated with physical courage. So, here’s a story combining physical courage and the art of misdirection.

Long ago in China, a young man set his heart on becoming a master jade carver. Fired with enthusiasm, he went to the greatest jade carver in the land and asked to become his student. The master agreed, and placed a piece of jade in the young man’s hand. “Please sit, we can begin right away.”

The young man eagerly sat with the stone in his hand, his gaze on the teacher. “Please tell me everything you know about jade.”

Nodding, the old man began to tell a long and rambling story about his own youth, and the student waited patiently for the lesson to begin. The story was actually a bit boring in parts, and the student clenched the jade in his hand to curb his impatience while the old man went on and on. At last, the master said, “Oh, it is late. You must come back tomorrow.”

The next day the student came again, and the master handed him another piece of jade. “Here, take a seat. Let us begin.” Now I will learn everything about jade! the student said to himself. But to his great disappointment, the master carver launched into another long story. The student tried very hard to focus on this story, sure that at any moment it was going to get to the point. But again, the master interrupted his own story and said, “Oh dear. It’s time for dinner. Come back tomorrow.”

Day after day this went on, with the teacher handing the student yet another piece of stone. Every day the student listened with his whole heart, trying to understand how these stories were teaching him everything about jade while he held one stone after another in his hands. He grew discouraged, thinking he had made a terrible mistake. At last, after this had gone on for many months, he arrived at his teacher’s house and said, “Master, forgive me, but when will you teach me about jade?”

The jade carver picked up yet another piece of stone and tossed it to the young man, who caught it deftly in two hands. “Now, this piece of jade -” the master began.

“This is not jade,” said the student, who had not even opened his hands to look at the stone.

The teacher nodded. “Ah, I see I have now taught you everything I know.”

Dancing Through the Pain, Part II

admin — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, in the first part of this interview with former professional ballet dancer, Jane Haugh, we discussed what can make a person willing to tolerate pain. Here, in Part II, we continue to explore pain as a voluntary experience, and as an involuntary experience. Jane now lives with her husband and three children in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Pain (as opposed to suffering, which is mental or emotional) is in the body, and thus is the risk associated with physical courage.

Haugh: In the end, Jen,

what I did in order to be a professional dancer in terms of dancing on stress fractures and soft corns with such unbelievable pain – I don’t know how healthy that was. I do question my decision to do that.

I think that it wasn’t emotionally and psychologically really healthy to get to the point where you could disengage your nerve centers from your feet so you didn’t feel your feet anymore. That’s not me. That’s not part of my body. That doesn’t hurt. To the point where I would sometimes bang my feet against something because that hurt so much that my brain shut that down and I could pretend it wasn’t there. So a little pain can be more difficult than a lot of pain. And I don’t think that’s so good! I think that’s kind of sick!

Armstrong: So you’re in this culture of never mind the pain, keep going. Were there techniques or mental processes or gimmicks that were part of that culture, were there stories, did you remind yourself of such and such dancer where she did this and –

Haugh: Sure! Stories about Melissa Hayden dancing on a broken foot, stories about Darcy Kistler when she broke her elbow and finished “Swan Lake.” We had these stories of famous people who performed through amazing things. Darcy I think seriously injured her elbow for life, and never did Swan Lake again – or only did Dying Swan – I don’t remember what the whole thing was – but it wasn’t good! But if you’re at the New York State Theater and you’re in Act I and you’ve got two more acts to do, what are you going to do? So you do it and then you go to the emergency room later I guess!

Armstrong: Okay, so I want to go in a different direction now. When your parents died and your sister was very badly injured [in a car wreck], you were 17, and so you were already a very dedicated dancer. So your sister was very badly injured for a long time, am I right?

Haugh: Yes, she was operated on a couple of times. You know, we did this weird thing. She had a plate in her arm, and she also had a brain injury, and deep into the fall they x-rayed her arm, and no healing had begun. The accident was in July and this was in September. And this bone was really brittle and they were very upset about it because the plate was not an ideal way to hold the bones together and it was kind of shocking that there had been no healing. And so they wanted us to rent this machine that was really really expensive and we didn’t have any health insurance, and my aunt [their guardian] was really upset about this, and I remember having a conversation with my sister where I said to her: “You have to concentrate on healing this bone. You have to think about it. You have to concentrate on it.” I don’t think if I wasn’t a dancer I would have thought of it that way. But I already understood that my body responded, to some extent, through the control of my mind. And I really did think that it was possible that if she concentrated on healing her arm that it would start to heal. And then we wouldn’t have to get this expensive machine and do all this stuff – and it did! They said they’d set up a four-week assessment and if no healing had begun she’d have to go up to Columbia regularly for electro-stim or something, and four weeks later there was quite a bit of new healing when they took an x-ray, or whatever they did. I don’t know whether that helped, but I definitely remember having this conversation with her. I remember – like taking a bath, and something really hurting, and just lying there and trying to relax my mind into that pain and trying to get the blood flowing there and I would start to feel – I mean I am not a big believer in that stuff. But…

Armstrong: Most Americans, probably, live pretty cut off from their bodies, right? Would you agree? So you had a much more intimate relationship with your body. So you understood a lot more about what the body can do, and what its limitations are. What I wonder is, did you ever evaluate or compare the pain that you endured willingly with the pain she had to endure unwillingly?

Haugh: No. I think one of the things that I learned from dancing is that everybody’s pain threshold is really different. And I started to understand that I actually experienced quite a bit of pain, especially for somebody who was a professional dancer, and that a lot of people around me were not experiencing quite that level of pain. So we would do the same thing, have the same number of blisters, and I felt like I could really barely walk, and I spent all night icing my feet, and the other person was out dancing. And I thought, well they are obviously not in as much pain! Or they’re managing it so differently. I mean, I see in my kids – there’s a huge difference in Z.’s and M’s pain thresholds, and then another huge leap to T.’s. Z. will hurt herself and she’ll get a bump somewhere, a black and blue mark, and a week later – not complaining, but she’ll say this thing still hurts, should I take some more arnica, or should I ice it ? And M. will have the same kind of injury and two days later she’ll have forgotten about it.

I think her body experiences less pain. Her body recovers from pain more quickly. She recovers from emotional upset more quickly. She recovers from loud noises more quickly. Her physiological self recovers faster from things. But I think T. [her son] – I don’t know how much pain he experiences but he rebounds very quickly partly because he doesn’t want to stop in order to feel that pain. So he can have a huge knot on his head and I think it’s got to hurt, but if I go to touch it he’ll shy away and it does hurt him, but he doesn’t want to stop. So that’s a different way to overcome pain, is to be so focused on what you want to do that the pain is secondary. So with my sister, I learned early on not to project any kind of pain I was feeling onto anyone else’s situation because it so often just doesn’t work. I’d be all sympathetic [to a fellow dancer] and they’d be like “What?” I’d say, “Your feet are a mess!” but it wasn’t bothering them.

Armstrong: Okay, so here’s something about pain, and that’s that pain has a lot to do with what we think about. What is the story we’re telling ourselves about the pain – am I doing myself an injury, what’s going to happen? The story we’re telling ourselves about what’s happening to our body… I mean, pain only happens when you notice it right?

Haugh: Right, so when you go on stage you don’t feel the pain in your feet because you have all this adrenaline, so you’re not noticing it.

Armstrong: It’s like taking the kids to the doctor to get a shot. There’s all this suffering, this storytelling. So, and this is my projection, I would think that if I’m a dancer, my world, everything I do, involves my body, right? So if I break my ankle then I won’t be able to work. So I’m curious about the role of storytelling in this. Stories that you tell yourself to keep going, or stories that limit you.

Haugh: Part of the story of dancing is being tough, of saying this hurts but I’m strong enough and I can overcome this, or this hurts and I might hurt myself but the director is there and I really want this part so I’m going to do this anyway, because I see myself as that person who will overcome this pain. And then he’ll see me as that person and then I’ll get the part. Or I’ll get to go on tour. So there’s some part of talking yourself into doing things because of the way you see yourself: as a strong person who can overcome things that normal people would stop at. You say, well, maybe someone else would stop, but that’s not me. I’m not that person and I’m going to keep going.

But I also think there’s storytelling with our kids, when our kids hurt themselves. There are two different things. There’s where people say, “you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay,” but the kid isn’t okay, and the kid is upset and doesn’t feel okay. And then there are people who say, “Oh no, you’re hurt! You’re bleeding, you’re not okay!” But there’s something in the middle where you can say, “Let me see what happened. I need to see what happened.” I think all three of my kids think of me as a very competent person to deal with whatever hurts them. They bring me their hurts. I say we need to calm down so we can see what happened so that we can deal with whatever that is. I think it’s really important for them to realize that you can get sick or you can get hurt and then your body does this amazing thing, it heals you, it heals your cut, you get a scab and then there’s nothing there anymore. What an amazing thing! So this is an opportunity to say, “You’ve hurt yourself, but you’re going to get better, because your body is this amazing thing that knows how to heal itself. How awesome is that! And then there’s this feeling of resiliency, this feeling of ow – I really hurt myself ! – but I know I’m going to be okay.

Please feel free to share your thoughts about physical courage and the risk of pain, either from your own experience or from watching your children.

On Stories, Narrative and Storytelling

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This again is from Bruce Jackson’s wonderful The Story is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories, and speaks to our human urge to reframe our experiences into coherent narratives so that we can understand what happens to us and around us:

“When we can’t figure out the plot in real life, people say, ‘It’s senseless, just senseless.’ And that may be true; it may be senseless. Sense is a product of our intelligence, not a condition of the world. But few of us are satisfied with ‘it’s senseless’ as an explanation. We want bottom lines. We want villains and conspiracies and plots like those in movies and novels; we want to live in a causal universe, a universe in which things make sense.”

Stories with Eleanor, Part 2

admin — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I had coffee with my friend, Eleanor Stanton, the associate pastor at the Presbyterian-New England Congregational Church in Saratoga Springs. We talked about her work with teens in the high school youth group, her pastoral counseling, her experience of cancer, and most of all, her use of stories. You can find the first part of our conversation here.

Jennifer: I’ve noticed that when you preach, you like to walk around and hold your printed page at your side. Did you have storytelling experience before you became a minister? What are the mechanics of how you do what you do when you are preaching? How did you come to that? How did you make that choice?

Eleanor: Well, as the baby of the family I was the entertainer! One of the first things I remember was mom teaching me “I’m a Little Teapot” and singing that for the family, and watching a lot of Shirley Temple movies. But I did not see that as a way to preach until I took a preaching class at [a UCC seminary near Boston]. The professor, who was also an ordained minister, was talking about narrative as the way of preaching that we were evolving toward. That the day of the 5-point essay had passed, and that that was an older style: “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them” didn’t engage people at an emotional level. The books that we studied, Preaching From the Heart, and some others, focused on narrative. He showed us clips of, in some cases really conservative preachers, but who used storyteller style. I remember saying to him, “I have a really big hurdle to overcome, because I’ve been hearing my minister for years; I can’t preach like that and he’s a great preacher. “ And my teacher said, “Really, what’s his name?” And I said [his name] and my teacher said, “Never heard of him.” It sounded so seditious and yet it was very freeing! He said storytelling is the way that is coming. And I said, “oh, I know how to tell stories!”

After that I began to deliberately cultivate and learn to tell stories better. I went to storytelling weekends and festivals to watch other storytellers talk about how you must use your body, or different voices, or just how they could paint a picture. So that has influenced my style. It was the affirmation of a teacher to say, “well, I never heard of this great preacher that you tell me you can’t preach like, but this thing that you can do, this is a valuable thing.” Somebody had to say to me that storytelling is a valuable thing. So that’s where I can’t think of it for myself, and I need some outside person to paint it, which is why your [Lion’s Whiskers blog] stories about courage are so important. Because for some people, it will be the first time that they get a clue that there’s a different way to be in a situation. You know, how do we deal with a lion? We run away. We give up. Clearly I cannot deal with a lion, I know what lions are like. Or – there’s this other way! That’s why I love your blog on courage because those particular stories – they’re lifesaving.

All these different kinds of courage – I love that too, because I come from a military family, I know what soldiers look like, especially when they come home from boot camp! I can’t do that kind of physical courage. But the courage to endure, to stay in a situation, and to not run away. I have developed more and more of that, of different kinds of courage. I like that there are different kinds of courage, and there are stories that show it, rather than just tell you. So people can see it. If you tell it as a story they see themselves in the story, and then they get to embody it. That’s the other reason why stories are important for children – they get to feel that vicarious thrill as Nancy Drew is scared to death but going up the stairs anyway.

Jennifer: Yes, you are definitely preaching to the choir on this one! [Stories] taught me how – or maybe reinforced what I already knew – this hardwiring of how narrative works, and how we can have these mental rehearsals for experiences. “Well, I’ve never done that, but I might.” Or just looking around at the world as a child, you look at adults and you see adults doing adult things. So, “I’ve never driven a car, but at some point I will. I’ve never gotten married, but maybe someday when I’m older I will.” So stories give you a way of – instead of it just being a piece of information – “it seems pretty typical that when you grow up you get married” – but to imagine it and to basically go through this rehearsal of what that might be like, and what you think your participation in it will be.

Eleanor: The rehearsal. What would it be like to move in that space? Which is also why it’s important to understand what are the stories that are the baseline stories that everybody knows in different cultures. If we know our story, we understand ourselves at a deeper level, but if we understand that in our culture – in America it’s the cowboy, the rugged individualist which has unfortunately run amok right now – but that’s our story, and it seems logical how we got to where we are today on that storyline. But what is the story for Arab countries? What is their story? What is the story in China or Japan? What are the Russian stories? Surely their stories have the same foundational effect and trajectory [for them] that ours do [for us.] So that’s why it’s important to know each other’s stories.

Recently I saw something about narrative medicine [at Columbia University]. And they’re calling people from the clergy to engage with this. The anecdote I read was that this chaplain was using this at a hospital with mental health patients – a psych hospital or psych ward – to share stories, to share their stories in the larger narrative of the Biblical story, and to help them maybe change their story or understand their story in a different way. And I became interested in that because I think that’s very powerful. And maybe that’s really where – not to negate all the cognitive therapy and behavioral mod – but I think it all happens at a deep story level. Can we place our stories inside some other big narrative? You know, the Bible has this narrative of: we start in a garden, we screw up, we end in a garden. It ends in a garden. God intervenes and makes sure we all come back to the garden in the end, so it has this very hopeful story arc. It goes to “love wins.” Everybody goes to heaven, even Gandhi! Many conservatives feel: nice guy, but he’s burning in hell because he didn’t accept Jesus.

Jennifer: So do you see either ministry as a whole or your ministry as a way of helping people put their stories into context? Is that part of what you think of as your role?

Eleanor: I believe that our lives are made better when we put our stories into some integrative whole where we’re not isolated, which often we do to ourselves before even society does it, although society has plenty of ways of sidelining us. But that if we put our story – no matter how bad – into a bigger structure, we can thrive in a way that we hadn’t realized we could. I mean, Africans were brought here and were introduced to Christianity because it was the religion of their white masters who didn’t consider them fully human, only partially so, and yet they embraced it and it became part of how they flourished and lived, because the story itself is the story of liberation and love. I think Jesus’s message is: the people who you think God really loves and the people you think God really hates, you’re wrong. It should make all of us very humble! So they were able to put their story of slavery into a bigger story: Joseph was sold into slavery, Joseph was watched over, and Joseph came to a place of prosperity. Okay. Maybe that’s possible for us. Or it is possible for us. Or childlessness. Or too many children, — all of these things are in there, which is why I know that the stories are true [on this level], because all of the human experience is in there. It’s why I like the Psalms. They’re whiny sometimes. Many of them start out – “how long, how long?” And they’re not guilt-ridden, it’s not “my life is so bad and I’ve caused this, please forgive me.” It’s “my life is so bad because You turned Your face away. You were off having a coffee and this wouldn’t have happened, so turn Your face back, because if You’d been paying attention this wouldn’t have happened, so pay attention!” They’re in your face. There is this wonderful relationship with and tension with the force of life that makes the green shoots to come up.

Jennifer: So the Psalms are proposing some mutual accountability?

Eleanor: Ah! And no matter if they start as “my pillow was wet with tears all night,” they end with “yet will I pay to the lord.” I really don’t think it’s a literary thing where they all have to end on a certain note. I think that when you engage with what it really feels like if you’re a person of faith, or even just sensitive to what’s going on, you understand that there’s something that keeps you breathing in and breathing out and keeps you going until breathing in and breathing out is not such an insult. I’ve talked to parents who’ve lost children, and breathing in and breathing out just hurts them, because they don’t want to be. They don’t have a present relationship with this energy. So yes, I think that’s what I’m doing with my ministry. People want their religion to be relevant in their daily life. It can’t just be a stained glass window that I go and look at and it’s really nice and beautiful. I appreciate the Tiffany glass exhibit in the museum, but I don’t live with Tiffany glass. I live with Corelleware. I need something that works with Corelleware. I think that finding your story within the larger trajectory helps you, because the story has its own power that pops up when you least expect it.

Jennifer: Tostoy has this wonderful quote about stories. He said all stories are either, “a man (or a woman) goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” Does one of those feel like it lives in your life more than the other does?

Eleanor: The man goes on the journey feels like much of the Old Testament stories to me. And a stranger comes to town feels like the Gospels, especially with the Christmas story. The unexpectedness like “no, not really?!” It’s like you’re pushing someone out of the way, saying, “I’m here to see the Dalai Lama, I’ve been waiting in line,” and you’re pushing aside the Dalai Lama because he isn’t wearing his glasses and robes and just dressed in a t-shirt and you’re just “no, no get out of the way!” So, a stranger comes to town. I think that in many ways the stranger is God.

When I go on a journey, and I find that my faith is a journey, I often feel myself accompanied. But I don’t always see my companion. Not that my companion is invisible, it’s just that in my head I think I’m here all by myself. It’s like the two-year-old who thinks when you play peek-a-boo that you’re really not there. So in many ways we can see throughout the Bible that it is God who keeps faith – the prophets do a lot of yelling, but Jeremiah had this real pathos. God is like this 15-year-old girl who’s just waiting for the phone to ring and you never call! And you cheat on her with other girls! And it’s really this pulpy love. And it’s hard sometimes to believe that there’s this great power that has this pulpy love for me. I think many people feel they are slightly unworthy of this pulpy love, which is why their own hearts are hardened. So yes, I find myself on a journey, and have experienced that in times of trouble I find myself accompanied usually only in the rear-view mirror – it’s like I came through the really stressful survival mode, and it lightens up a little bit I can see there was this [companion] keeping watch over me and I can reconnect.

***********

We finished our conversation by talking about the story of the Good Samaritan, which I’ve retold on this blog, and Eleanor talked about God as the annoying neighbor who asks challenging and cringe-making questions, not the nice one who comes over and shovels your sidewalk when it snows. To make clear how reviled the Samaritans were by the original audience of that story, and how problematic the tale would have been for them, she retold it this way: in her understanding of the story, if she were the traveler attacked on the road, the Samaritan would be one of those evangelical preachers who proclaims “God hates fags!” or who wants to burn the Koran. It would be that one who helped her, and tended her wounds, and paid for her to stay in a motel. “And then I’d have to deal with that,” she said, grimacing as she put her coat on against the December chill. “That’s how annoying God is.”

And that’s the power of stories. Whatever your faith, whatever your traditions, we here at Lion’s Whiskers wish for you all good stories. Be of good courage!

This Is Your Brain on Stories

admin — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve offered a lot of traditional stories on Lion’s Whiskers over the last several months. How many of you are telling them to your kids? Maybe not a lot of you, and that’s okay! But I hope you have gathered something from these stories. What I hope you have picked up on is this: around the world, in every culture, people have been telling stories not simply for entertainment, but for creating metaphors for understanding their world. I also hope I can persuade you that some form of storytelling – whether with traditional narratives or your own “When I was a kid” yarns – can be a powerful parenting tool, and may help your kids to develop the six types of courage.

I’ve shared a lot of my own anecdotal observations about the power of storytelling, and posted lots of inspiring quotations about the role of stories in our lives. What’s fascinating and exciting is that cutting-edge brain science is beginning to back up the wisdom of the ages. Researchers from many disciplines are using fMRI brain scanning to investigate what actually happens in our brains when we listen to stories. The fields of advertising and journalism have always known how to harness the power of stories; but that power is now part of medical education and law schools, in tax compliance and political discourse, as part of proposed Alzheimer’s treatments, and part of the on-going discussion concerning whether an understanding of narrative can help explain wartime behaviors. Even the defense department is studying whether narrative approaches can help create military leaders with more moral courage.

I want to very briefly (as a layperson, children’s author, and researcher on the importance of story-telling in our culture) summarize some of the findings.

Humans are hardwired for narrative. Evidence is mounting that we are natural storytellers, not by training or by culture, but by biology. The creation of metaphors for understanding our experience is automatic, which helps explain why being presented with facts is often insufficient for decision-making. When we create metaphors for information and experience, they fit more readily into a narrative frame and allow us to imagine how the story might end. Researchers such as Paul Bloom at Yale University’s Mind and Development Lab study babies to figure out how the imagination makes information processing possible, and use puppet plays (stories) to study babies’ moral judgement. “Story,” writes brain scientist Mark Turner, “is a basic principle of mind. Most of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories.”

. Oxytocin is released by stories. Oxytocin, the hormone associated with love and attachment, can be triggered by listening to stories. Oxytocin receptors are located in the pleasure centers of the brain; those stimuli that trigger the release of oxytocin (snuggling, for example) are the ones we seek rather than avoid. This tells us that listening to stories is an adaptation for survival. Oxytocin has also been linked to trust, empathy and moral behavior, and may thus be relevant for creating stable societies.

To an avid reader or storyteller, it’s stating the obvious to say that when we are immersed in a story, we feel excitement when the character feels excitement, grief when the character feels grief. We have all experienced the emotions of the characters we love, especially those with whom we empathize. But not only that, the areas of the brain that register motion are also stimulated when characters in story experience motion. When we say we are moved by a story, this is true in more ways than one. The brain lights up as if the listener (or reader) is actually in the story, fighting dragons and falling in love.

So how is this related to courage development in our children? Dr. Lisa has discussed oxytocin’s role in promoting attachment which contributes significantly to courage development and resiliency in children. If storytelling, too, triggers oxytocin release, then we can speculate that storytelling also has a role in both deepening the connection in secure attachment relationships and inspiring courage and moral development in our children. On top of that, we have the connection between fear and uncertainty: because storytelling is a human adaptation for interpreting and making sense of experience, it may help reduce uncertainty, and by extension, reduce fear. Stories offer us the opportunity for mental, imaginative, neurobiological rehearsal of experiences we may encounter in the future. Just as champion athletes use visualization techniques to ready themselves for the contest to come (a form of storytelling), we can use stories to prepare ourselves and our children for the challenges of the future.

Whether you retell the traditional stories I’ve offered on this blog, pick a book from my bookshelf to read your child, or you like sharing family stories and taking turns narrating your day’s events at dinnertime, stories are powerful, free and abundant. They are what make us human and inspire us all to have courage in life. As the Native American saying goes, “Take courage from the story.”

A few quotations on the power of stories

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Whether you tell traditional stories, share your childhood escapades with your kids, narrate the day’s events or make up stories on the spot – grab the power of storytelling for your parenting toolkit!

Here’s a little bit of food for thought:

“Great stories teach you something. That’s one reason I haven’t slipped into some kind of retirement: I always feel like I’m learning something new.” ~ Clint Eastwood

“The process of putting your life into order with a beginning, middle, and end forces you to see cause and effect.” Cahtherine Burns, artistic director, The Moth

“Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best – and change – from hearing stories that strike a chord within us… Those in leadership positions who do not grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.” ~ John Kotter, Harvard Business School

“The Conceptual Age can remind us what has always been true but has rarely been acted upon – that we must listen to each other’s stories and that we are each the authors of our own lives… we are our stories.“ Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind

The Sea of Stories

admin — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead, but alive.” Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories

I confess to being a huge Rushdie fan, not so much because of his work (although Midnight’s Children is arguably one of the greatest novels of world literature), but because I have heard him speak – about stories, and about the experience of being in fear for his life because of storytelling. For those of you too young to recall, Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, brought down the wrath of the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran with a fatwa, a sentence of death, in 1989. In short, the Ayatollah said that his followers had an obligation to execute Rushdie. There was a huge international outcry that continued for years; nevertheless, Rushdie was forced into hiding for several years, truly in mortal danger while violence and book burnings erupted around the world. It was appalling.

WWII poster protesting Nazi book burnings

His first book after this experience was Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a fantastical riff on the 1,001 Arabian Nights which he wrote, he said, partly to explain to his son what had happened to him. The control of stories and storytelling is one of the first things on every dictator’s to-do list; can there be any better evidence about the power that stories have? As the tyrant in Haroun complains, inside every story is a world that he can’t control.

Authoritarian regimes fear the independence of thought and action that stories encourage. In my role as the Lovely K.’s personal bard, I must always be on the lookout for my own motives in choosing or not choosing a story for her. If I pass over a story because I’m afraid it will “give her ideas,” then I probably should go back and tell that story without delay! As a parent I am a one-person authoritarian regime, but if I must be a dictator then I can at least strive to be an enlightened and benevolent one. After all, independence of thought and action is what I’m trying to teach my daughter. Isn’t that what we mean by courage?

The Rule of Threes

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“Third time’s the charm,” goes the saying. This, in a nutshell, is the Rule of Threes, an almost universal pattern in storytelling. Three wishes, three wise men, three billy goats gruff, three sisters, three brothers, three little pigs – when you begin to notice, you will see threes everywhere in traditional stories.

Why?

It is now well-understood that humans are pattern-making and pattern-seeking creatures. This cognitive behavior helps us learn that Chihuauas, Great Danes and Basset Hounds are all dogs, for instance. It helps us with predictions: when the heat and humidity and air pressure build on a summer day we prepare for a thunderstorm. This behavior can also lead us astray, tricking us into seeking significance or meaning in random events, or can give rise to superstitions (such as “bad luck comes in threes.”) For good or for ill, we look for patterns.

The smallest number of units that can create a pattern is three. One is an individual. Two might be a coincidence. Three sets the pattern. Thus, the number three is the most efficient and compact (and thus the most memorable) number of elements for establishing something as significant. The ancient Greeks even had a term for this – the tricolon. The tricolon creates special emphasis: on your mark, get set, go; ready, willing, and able; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; healthy, wealthy and wise; of the people, by the people, for the people; the good, the bad, and the ugly. The list goes on and on – and on!

In comedy, the rule of threes is used to set up jokes, usually by breaking the pattern on the third go, and thus creating humor out of the surprise. In stories, the rule of threes allows us to anticipate that the third try, the third brother, the third wish – whatever it is – will be the one to resolve the story.

When you are telling stories (traditional tales or family stories) around the dinner table, or in the car, or on a walk, you can use the rule of threes to your advantage. Whatever part of the story you want to highlight, put a tricolon in there! The third part of the tricolon will usually be the most memorable. “The king was handsome, brave and generous,” is actually different from “The king was brave, generous and handsome,” which is different from, “The king was handsome, generous and brave.” Or how about introducing a family story with, “My aunt Mary was tall, stubborn and greedy,” versus, “My aunt Mary was stubborn, greedy, and tall.” In the first, we expect greediness to be the main feature of the story, in the second, we expect her height to be the main feature.

Naturally, as we are concerned with developing courage, I suggest you can use the rule of threes to emphasize the courageous aspects of your stories. Have fun with your threes!

On a Journey

admin — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” – Leo Tolstoy

Lisa and I were talking about Steven Spielberg, and that had me thinking about how this great modern storyteller’s work fits Tolstoy’s observation. Stories are about our encounter with the unfamiliar. Either we have gone on a journey and find the unfamiliar along the way, or the unfamiliar comes and finds us where we live, even if we just wanted to stay home and have a cup of coffee. Consider two of Spielberg’s many great films: Jaws, and Schindler’s List.

Jaws (one of my very favorite movies, precisely because the storytelling is so masterful) is like so many great tales that follow the “stranger” model: a monster has broken the security of our peaceful home, and the hero must conquer the monster and restore peace. Police Chief Brody had expected the island to be a quiet refuge from the dangers of New York City, only to have a more ominous danger rise from the deep (metaphor alert!) Classic stories of this type include Beowulf (both the monster and Beowulf are strangers, by the way.)

Schindler’s List, on the other hand, is a journey. (Bear in mind that most journeys in story are metaphorical; the hero travels from one emotional, psychological, spiritual, or moral state into another.) At the start of this movie Schindler’s motto is “What’s in it for Schindler?” By the end, he is weeping with regret that he had not been able to save even more lives. Classic stories of this type include, of course, the Odyssey.

The unfamiliar or the unknown is at the root of many of our fears, maybe even all of them. We don’t know what will happen to us if we try X; will that new person be our friend or not; if I go to the different place will I be safe? But because stories, at their core, are about meeting the unfamiliar, they help us experience that meeting again and again – in safety. They are a way to practice encountering strangers, facing the thing in the shadows that we can’t see. We can be fortified by this practice and apply that courage in our life.

(Readers interested in exploring what mythology and legend can tell us about the Shadow, our projection of our negative qualities onto a faceless enemy –may want to read Joseph Campbell, or watch the famous conversations between Campbell and Bill Moyers about “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” on DVD.)

But I would like to add that there are other ways to practice encountering the unfamiliar, and this may be part of our practice of developing our adaptive capacity, our ability to “roll with it” when changes occur. When I catch myself being rigid in my parenting, I know it’s time to loosen up. There is security and comfort in the familiar, for sure, and I know that predictability has been important for my daughter in her transition to life in this country; but inflexible routine can also create tedium and resentment. A few months back, the Lovely K. asked if she could sleep under the dining room table. It was a school night, and my knee-jerk reaction was to say no.

But I caught myself. What’s the worst that can happen? A poor night’s sleep and thus a cranky kid the next day? Wanting to sleep somewhere else the next night? A refusal to sleep in her own bed again? Outright sedition and rebellion? Nonsense. What I was really afraid of was change.

Yet change is exactly what I want her to be open to – to trying new things, to being willing to explore, to treat the unknown and unfamiliar as opportunities rather than threats, to have the courage to break away. I want her to develop her adaptive capacity!

“Okay,” I said when I saw where my thoughts were leading me. “Go ahead.”

She eagerly prepared a bedroll, and arranged stuffed animals in her camping spot as I began turning out lights and prepared to go upstairs. “Everything’s different under here,” she said with awed excitement.

Did you see that? That was a journey.

The Children’s Room

admin — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

For the most part, if you want to find fairy tales and folk tales and myths and legends, if you want to use enchantment, you must go to the children’s room of the library, or the children’s section of the bookstore. This has created the false impression that these stories are intended only for children. It wasn’t always that way.

In the generations before blogs, before video on demand, before t.v., before radio, before books, even, entertainment in the form of oral storytelling was just about the only game in town. For all the centuries before the industrial age, labor meant repetitive tasks over many tedious hours, hours that were relieved by telling stories. Spinning and weaving, for example, are sedentary and monotonous, and played such a huge role in the tradition of storytelling that spinning a yarn and weaving a tale are now synonymous with the art of the story. We fabricate our own stories or follow the thread of someone else’s adventures. Text and textile both come from the same Latin word, texere, to weave. Everyone shared the stories while they worked, young and old, even when it was R-rated and even X-rated — I suspect covering the children’s ears happened sometimes, but not always!

It wasn’t until the great collectors of folklore in the 18^th and 19^th centuries that the “wonder tales” were written down systematically, and then found their way into the nurseries and school rooms of the literate classes. Suddenly, the bawdy stories that had provided laughs for laboring grown-ups were deemed immoral and unsuitable for children, and new editions were printed with a young audience in mind. Scholars have traced the banishment of many stories from the later editions of the Grimms’ collections that had appeared in the earliest, for example. Eventually it came to seem that the principal audience for the stories was and always had been children, and such tales became “childish.” So began, I believe, the steady exile to the children’s room of all traditional stories, be they myths, legends, fables or fairy tales. It’s as if a stern voice said, “Go to your room!”

Now, I don’t mean to take these stories away from children, obviously. However, the problem arises when older kids take the view that they are too old to hear stories, or when adults think there’s nothing on those shelves to share with teens and tweens. Listen well: there is more than enough to fill the heart and mind for them as well as for their parents! What a treat there is if you look! These are “messages from our ancestors.” Let’s keep our ears open for those messages, for there is much wisdom in them.

The beautiful children’s room of our public library is in the lower level, and the approach down the stairs is painted with friendly beasts and characters from well-loved classics. If my daughter gets to be too cool to go downstairs there where the little chairs are, I’ll keep going there for her to get the books to share. Hopefully, she won’t get to be too cool. Hopefully she’ll always have the social courage to ask for these stories herself.