If you have seen the online Sandals and a Stick blog site, you’ll notice the “Insightful Advice” header. For one reason or another, these bloggers seem to hit the nail on the head for me more often than most.
Over the years, I’ve noticed numerous articles written about stories. They’re not the once-upon-a-time stories you might be thinking of. A phrase I read often starts with, “The story we tell ourselves.”
After all this time, I am convinced we live by these internal narratives. These ‘stories’ confirm our beliefs and our values. They guide our reactions and they ground us in our comfort zone. I would guess that, to a large degree, they decide who will be a friend or foe.
My inner stories greatly affect my life. And to the same degree, they affect yours as well. Yes, my opinion, of course.
But I’ll speak mostly of my experiences going forward today.
I grew up in a middle-class white neighborhood and went to parochial grade and high school. I was grateful that my parents had gone out of their way to provide a good education even though we didn’t have a lot of money. All my friends were just like me although I was aware that some families had more and some less than we did. These few facts were the basis for my stories. I just had not realized that the experiences building my convictions were not the same for everyone.
Decades later, I started to question how someone could think about things so much differently than I did. I was confronted with the stories of others and did not understand. Well, they were wrong. Of course, they were wrong.
And then I questioned that as well.
Years went by. I heard sermons about loving your neighbor. I tried. I failed. I faked it. I tried again. How on earth can a person do what scripture seems to be saying? I am guessing that I have been fighting my internal narratives without even knowing it was the story in my head that prevented me from loving everyone.
Even now, I need to be aware of these stories. Even today, I need to sit with them, research them, and adjust them to account for the stories of others. I think they used to call this admonition, “Do not judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes.”
I don’t hear that phrase much anymore. I wish I did. I wish we all did.
Well, enough theory. Let’s get to one of the "My Story vs Your Story" issues.
I have mentioned that I felt blessed that I had a good education. I guess that no matter where you go to school, there’s only so much available time for instruction and study. Nobody can know everything. But I found holes. I found things that, in my opinion, I should have been taught. I discovered history that was ignored, and it angers my sensibilities.
Just a few years ago, 2021 to be exact, I learned of two historical facts of which I knew nothing about.
I’ll let you read the articles referring to those two eye-opening events.
I had been clueless about these things. Originally I felt embarrassed, but I know that it wasn’t my fault.
- I was never exposed to the idea that I would need a ‘travel guide’ to help me figure out the safest place to buy gas or to sleep for the night.
- I was never exposed to the horrific event that occurred in Tulsa in 1921. That citizens of one American city could murder, burn, and drop bombs on the citizens of the same city would not have been imaginable to ‘my’ story.
Since I am a believer in prayer, I thought that I would add a few excerpts from one recently found in my inbox.
"(Imagine a) story of peace, whose hero is love. It’s a story of justice and equity and safety and joy. Imagine that story as a little point of light that comes to rest in the center of your being. Then imagine that little point of light becoming a pool of light and a spring or a fountain of light. Just for the next few moments, picture that point of light growing within you.Imagine yourself becoming full of that light. Now imagine that light filling you and that light shining out through you. Imagine now that this light coming out from you touches those around you, those in your family, your neighbors, others in your neighborhood, those in your workplace, those in your faith community, and all others you meet. Imagine that this light embraces them and also that it fills them.
We all know that there are many other stories at work in the world, stories that are wounding people, stories that maybe wounded each of us. Let’s realize that we can be tempted to respond to those stories that wound in a way that continues that [wounding] story. For a few moments, let’s hold in our hearts a prayer, a request, a plea for help, that our lives would not be sucked into the stories that wound, but that we would live on a steady course of a story that heals.
May I live in the story of peace, whose hero is love. May that story live in me.
May the story of God’s peace bring healing to us and to the world.
May the story of God’s love bring healing to us and to the world. Amen."
Recited by Brian McLaren and Carmen Acevedo Butcher
February is Black History Month.
This event has become a time for me to walk in the shoes of another while confronting my story. It has become important to me that I discover the history ignored by my education.
Examples of the stories we tell ourselves are provided in the links below.
- Brené Brown on How to Reckon with Emotion and Change Your Narrative
- Mental Badassery: Becoming Aware of the Stories We Tell Ourselves
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