Everyone has a story

On Monday evening, I read my "This I Believe" essay at Shepherd University's auditorium where a handful of townspeople came together to share their stories, along with those who were there to listen. This is part of Shepherd's "Common Reading" experience that invites all students, faculty and staff, as well as us regular folks, to read one book and engage in a common reading and shared experience. My essay, titled "In So Many Words," was about how I believe in the power of words to perform many wonders. One of those wonders is that words form stories and poems and plays that transcend boundaries of culture and time and distance -- things that would make us believe that we are somehow different, that others don't understand us.


While mine was not the most provocative essay read that night, what happened in that small group of readers and listeners proved the point I was making about the power of words. If I were to rewrite my essay now, it would be titled, "Every one of us has a story worth telling." That short time spent in the company of people who had interesting, surprising, funny and inspiring stories to tell the rest of us -- stories that informed their own values, priorities, and deeply held beliefs -- was magical. I left, marveling at the breadth and depth of human experience and the signposts along our journey that we often ignore. Someone appears to be plain vanilla, so we don't give him our attention. Another individual is older, younger, different from us in any number of ways, and we pass her right by, thinking there's nothing we could have in common. Nothing could be further from the truth.


Loie once gave Zach a blank journal that said on the front, "Everyone is the hero of his own story," and I think it's true -- or sometimes somebody else is the hero of your story. But you do have a story, and it's worth telling. I've bookmarked and started listening to the StoryCorps website where the slogan is "Every voice matters." (Check it out here: http://storycorps.org/).


One particular essay has stuck with me, and I would like to hear it again and again. It was written and read by a woman who volunteers to read stories to children in a variety of venues. So one day she is in the ER of a local hospital and has along with her a book of photographs -- no words. She approaches a weary mother and her two children, waiting. She asks if they would like to look at her book. The younger child, a girl, says yes and is animated and interested in every photograph. The older child, a pre-teen boy dressed all in black, is indifferent, keeping his eyes glued to some electronic device in his hand, shrugging off any invitation to join in. They get to the last photograph in the book, a photo of a statue -- an eagle in a large cage, atop a city building. The boy glances over, then speaks: "The eagle is trapped in a cage, looking at the people in the city. The people in the city are trapped in a cage, looking at the bird."

"That's poetry, you know," the storyteller says to him. "I'm going to get a pen and write your poem under the photograph." And she does. As she's writing, the boy says, to nobody in particular, "I might be a writer."

Her essay, the storyteller's, was about how so often, what's on the surface is not all there is to a person -- how sometimes, in order to hit gold, you have to dig a little deeper. I'd say that she hit paydirt with this boy in black.

This is an invitation to tell your story. It's more interesting than you believe. I promise. All it takes is what you know -- your own experience -- and words to express it. Or photographs.