The Power of Story, Part Two

Imagine I was telling you a story.

No huge exciting plot, just one of those “moral dilemma” tales aimed at kids.  You know the kind: a couple of girls find a pile of money in a brown paper bag on a playground; there is no identification attached, and the dilemma is: should they turn it in, or should they keep it?  In this story, the two girls are sitting on a see-saw, slowly going up and down as they discuss their options.  The see-saw creaks a bit as it moves.  The playground is next to an elementary school, though these girls are no longer elementary school-aged. Just a couple of kids on their way home when they spotted the money, in a bag, on a bench.  Maybe they were riding bikes, when they noticed the bag.  Anyway, it is nearing sunset in the late autumn.  There is a bit of chill in the air, and the girls are alone as they talk.

So that’s the scene.  Everyone reading this has the same information.  Yet everyone reading this will have a different mind-movie of the scene I just set.  My idea of what the playground looks like, what the girls sound like, how they are dressed, what a chilly afternoon in late autumn feels like will be different from your impressions, and your impressions will differ from everyone else’s.

We cannot help but draw details from our own life experiences to make sense of the scene, as a painter is limited to using the colors on his palette to create a picture.  We unconsciously and instinctively complete the images described in the vignette adding to the incomplete information I presented.

Here’s the neat part: To hear or read a story is to literally co-create it, and to co-create it is to be drawn in.  We who receive a story are collaborators in that story experience, even if we have no skills at making up stories ourselves.  That is one of the great aspects of story-sharing.

And understanding this can make just about any information shared more compelling.  Even some late night musings about the power of story.