Ask for a story
View(s):All holidays are about remembering, whether it be an event, an idea, or a promise. What binds us to our culture and the communities we choose and are born into is that we learn their stories. That is what I sat down with my family and friends to do over a sumptuous meal one day. As the night wore on I realised that all around us are stories and we make the choices about which ones we hear.
Moreover, what we hear in these stories is limited by the perspective of the storyteller. These days, ‘storytellers’ are essentially those people who supply our newspapers and television. But what about the stories that we can ask to hear, those ones which are not fed to us on the 6 o’clock news?
Even as adults, we asks for stories as children do: demanding that the storyteller focus most upon the parts that we like most to hear, eager to drink in every drop of the story that builds our worldview. Are we so bold when we grow up? Do we ask to hear the stories of the homeless on the streets, or do we just assume that they are there due to governmental or personal failure? Do we know what foster homes are within our locale? Do we know the history of the heritage homes in our city, or even the favourite tourist hangouts, to show our friends when they come to visit from overseas? These are our local stories, and often we do not know about what goes on around us, yet we can be concerned with the latest morbid shootings in America, or stranded polar bear on an ice floe in the Arctic.
In a very real way, charity begins at home. Yet you can’t be charitable if you don’t understand the situation of the other person, or the roots of the problem occurring. Ask for stories. Ask the orphanage care-taker the stories of some of the children and learn to be sensitive to their situation. Ask an elder to recount their happiest moments, their tragedies, their most embarrassing moments so you can both have a laugh. Ask an environmentalist why a forest is being intruded upon and ask what an average citizen can do to help. Only by asking can we empathise, and only through empathy can we truly help others.
Seeing improvements due to our very own effort gives us warm and fuzzy feelings but more than that, it gives us an understanding of our own power to affect change. It makes us more likely to attempt to shape the world around us, rather than throwing up our hands in despair at the enormity of the world.
Asking for a story may not seem like much, but we can never avoid seeing – and living in – the consequences of the combined stories of every person, animal, and plant on this planet. If we want to understand our own lives, let us learn to look properly at what they are built up from – by asking for a story.
This article was written by a Stitch volunteer. For more information visit ww.stitchmovement.com or find us on FB or Twitter
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