THE POWER AND PERIL OF STORIES

(This post is adapted from a speech delivered at a June 4, 2014 conference for educators sponsored by the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation.)

Our culture is literally awash in stories: tweets and posts on Facebook or Instagram, Pinterest boards, YouTube rants, and round-the-clock newscasts. We trade emails about TED Talks we like and pine for the next edition of Radiolab. Nearly everyone I know has participated in, or is preparing for, a storytelling slam.Telling a story is the easiest, most exciting way to explain a problem, describe a condition, make a friend, or sum up a situation. Stories are also an incredibly powerful teaching tool. 

Why?

We’re wired for them. Research indicates that stories are 22x more memorable than facts or bullet points because they activate, not just the language processing parts of our brain, but other parts as well: If someone tells us about how delicious certain foods are, our sensory cortex lights up. If they tell us a story that involves motion, our motor cortex gets active. Because our brains are always trying to make sense of what we are hearing, they are constantly seeking connections to whatever experiences we may have squirrelled away in memory.

Researchers at Princeton University found that a remarkable thing happens to our minds when we hear a story. Personal stories actually cause the brains of both storyteller and listener to exhibit what the study called “brain to brain coupling.” To put it simply, telling personal stories puts us in sync with the listener and helps forge human connections that are essential to our well-being.

They can make us stronger and more resilient. Studies conducted by Emory University psychologists over the past two decades appear to demonstrate that family narratives – about where one’s parents met and where they lived as children, about how a grandparent earned a living, or a setback that put the family in debt – actually foster resilience in children. The more children know about their past, the stronger their sense of control over their lives: indeed, researchers determined that familiarity with one’s family narratives was the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.

So what of storytelling’s perils?

Just as narrative can be a powerfully positive force in our lives, it can limit, oversimplify, or silence. In a TED talk that has now enjoyed 7 million hits, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie reflects on the way in which stories - specifically, a single story with cultural currency -- can reduce a people or a country to stereotypes. That single story, she explains, can become the only story that we know. For example, she relates how her mother repeatedly described her family houseboy as poor. When Adichie visited him in his home village, she recalls being startled to enter a home in which she is shown beautiful baskets woven by the boy’s brother. “All I’d heard about my poor houseboy’s family is that they were poor so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.”  It simply didn’t compute: poor people could not make or have such beautiful things.

In another TED talk economist Tyler Cowen regarded storytelling with a particularly jaundiced eye.

“I was told to come here and tell you stories,” he said, “but what I’d like to do is instead tell you why I’m suspicious of stories, why stories make me nervous. In fact,” he continues, “the more inspired a story makes me feel, very often the more nervous I get…The good and bad things about stories is that they’re a kind of filter. They take a lot of information and they leave some of it out, and they keep some of it in…”

We make sense of our lives, Cowen laments, by squeezing our choices and events into a single, manageable, perhaps heroic, narrative. “If I actually had to live those journeys and quests and battles,” he states, “it would be so oppressive to me! It's like, my goodness, can't I just have my life in its messy, ordinary…glory? It's fun for me - do I really have to follow some kind of narrative? Can't I just live?”

I found his message especially refreshing as a professional in human services who is asked often to share stories about our graduates. I used to like telling them. But they have begun to make me uncomfortable. A story captures a snapshot in time. On Wednesday I could tell you about a graduate who had enjoyed particular success – by Friday, she might have gone back to jail, relapsed, or been fired. Life is fragile and dynamic, particularly for many of the women with whom we work. Stories also skim over details that if examined closely might make the difference between a good program and a superior one. 

As funders and advocates, we hunger for stories that follow a particular arc: she was in prison and without hope; she enrolled in our program and developed skills; she graduated and now owns her own company. Some stories follow that line, but most don’t; they’re pocked by crises of confidence, misguided decisions, or a bout of bad luck. Now I don’t wait to trumpet the grand success but instead celebrate the small steps, with the hope that there will continue to be forward movement. It is more honest, and is fairer to the participant, who can be overwhelmed by our hopes and expectations.

Finally, in our zeal to share our stories we may drown others out.  We might offer our stories as a means of connecting with or supporting young people. But too often, I think, our voices crowd out those we need to hear or assert similarities where in fact there may be few.

Striking a Balance

We shouldn’t stop telling stories just because they’re tricky. Stories are critical if we’re to help young people figure out who they are and what they can become.

One of the best memoirs I’ve ever read is The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. I like it, not just because it is so beautifully written or because its story is compelling, but also because its author offers a portrait of parents who could be both abusive and tender, stunningly oblivious and surprisingly clear-eyed. A passage from the book describes a Christmas evening spent with her father, a gambling alcoholic who once offered his daughter to the winner of a pool game:

“When Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one. 

‘Pick out your favorite star’, Dad said.

‘I like that one!’ I said.

Dad grinned, ‘That's Venus", he said. He explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant and stars twinkled because their light pulsed.

‘I like it anyway,’ I said.

‘What the hell,’ Dad said. ‘It's Christmas. You can have a planet if you want.’
And he gave me Venus.

Venus didn't have any moons or satellites or even a magnetic field, but it did have an atmosphere sort of similar to Earth's, except it was super hot-about 500 degrees or more.

‘So,’ Dad said, ‘when the sun starts to burn out and Earth turns cold, everyone might want to move to Venus to get warm. And they'll have to get permission from your descendants first.’

“We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. ‘Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten,’ Dad said, ‘you'll still have your stars.’

I was so confused by this – a sweet and enduring gesture from a man that two pages earlier I’d wanted to punch. But it is precisely why I loved this book and admire Walls. Her father is neither monster nor saint but a complicated tangle of contradiction. 

All of us, but particularly parents or professionals who work with children, need to recognize stories for what they are: a distillation, a way to organize and understand. As Cowen suggests, we should be discerning consumers of the stories we hear and wonder what might have been left out. We must also be as honest as possible in shaping the stories that we tell, maybe even leaving in the messy parts and foregoing a tidy ending. Human existence is essentially complex and often contradictory. Storytelling should be, too.  

And you know what? Not only can young people handle it – they need it.  

- Tiffany Bluemle