Does the title of this post scare you?
By the end of it, I hope you see where I'm coming from. So... keep reading.
Senior year of college I took an intro-level sociology class. Actually, if I’ve being honest, it was my second time taking that class. My first time taking it was while I was abroad in Prague, Czech Republic (I passed), but somehow I managed to finagle it onto my easy-as-can-be schedule for my last semester of college. No one from the “people who ensure you’ve taken all the right classes to graduate” department seemed to notice I already took it, so I thought, “hey, one less class I need to worry about, considering I already know all the material,” and threw it on my schedule.
Anyway, I didn’t pay attention in that class at all. I’m pretty sure I showed up and sat on my phone in the back of the lecture hall just to use my iClicker (do students still use those?) to get credit for attendance. Needless to say, I was putting in minimum effort.
Except for when students were scheduled to speak during class. That’s when I paid attention.
The first time a student rose to the podium and spoke, I was probably still on my phone, scrolling through God knows what. It wasn’t until he started speaking about his experience with food insecurity and homelessness that I put down my phone and listened to what he was saying.
It was the first time I heard someone— a live human in front of me— talk about being homeless and not knowing where his next meal was coming from.
He talked about how he was one of seven children in his family. How he would forego eating corn from a can so that his siblings could eat “dinner” instead. How he had shuffled from hotel to shelter to a different hotel and then to another shelter. How he would switch schools and school districts all the time. How he knows the feeling of hunger better than any other feeling the human body elicits.
In the moments of me listening to him share details of his experience with homelessness and food insecurity, I realized how incredibly important the power of storytelling is. Had I not sat there in that class on that day, I would still think saying, “I look homeless,” while wearing $180 shoes, $60 leggings, and a hoodie that probably cost $50 was “just a saying”. It’s not “just a saying” when you listen to someone pour out their heart about their harsh reality with homelessness. It is ignorant. That is what it is.
“I look homeless,” is not accompanied by a $300+ price tag in just clothing alone.
But would I still think that if I didn’t listen to him choke back words as he detailed his journey with not having a roof over his head? I don’t think so.
Or the time I listened to literally 10-15 Black students speak about the discrimination they faced, hate they dealt with, and exhaustion they felt from just trying to be equally regarded and treated at school.
Or the time I listened to survivors of sex-trafficking give a presentation on trafficking statistics in Nepal. They handed out a book titled Sold afterward, and when I finished the novel, every ounce of my femininity left my body to connect with the collective psyche every woman who has ever walked the face of this earth is apart of. A part of me will remain there because you cannot read something so raw and real and go back to believing that sex slavery is a thing of the past. It most certainty is not.
So, when I read a book in college (sorry, I tried my best to find the name of it but cannot for the life of me figure it out) that detailed the story of how a young, lost, uneducated boy living in the Middle East was approached by ISIS and promised unity, brotherhood, and consistent shelter and food, I understood how someone with no direction and emotional connections could have hope that this older, much more experienced man was offering him a shot at a good life.
You can see how a young boy can be brainwashed into believing and committing evil acts. You can see how he struggled with creating social ties, and being part of a group overruled his underdeveloped moral compass. You can see all these unfortunate parts of life intertwine and convolute this young boy’s mind. You can see that he was just trying to find purpose.
That is how you find yourself sympathizing with a young boy who becomes a member of a terrorist group. That is how powerful storytelling is.
Storytelling can transport you into the mind and life of someone you do not personally know and change you forever. It can dismantle the ideas of what “good” and “bad” are and force you to see humanity for what it is. It is essential for our progression and advancement as a species, and I mean that with everything in me.
If something is going to change you, 9/10 times it’s because there’s a story behind it. Stories are not just in books or blog posts. They’re not only in the plot line of a movie or show. Every human being has a story. Every single one.
I’m not writing this post to convince anyone that you have to overlook the bad parts of people and solely accept them for their good ones. I’m writing this to shed light on the fact that listening to someone’s story is how you understand them. We are so quick to judge, yet we forget that when people make decisions that we don’t understand, it’s because we don’t know the full story. And if we do know the full story and still don’t understand, then we’re not listening close enough.
Storytelling can be misconstrued as an unnecessary or nonessential skill, but truly, it’s how we change humankind. It is commonly misunderstood that the policies and laws that are written to advance developing cities and countries are monumental in their progress, but the truth is, they do not take shape as quickly or as effectively compared to the work that grassroots foundations do on the ground. Why? Because they’re the ones who are living, breathing, and sleeping the stories of the people in that area. A law can be enacted, a policy can be written, and a rule can be enforced, but humans don’t change to simply appease other people. Foundational change happens when there is a story behind something. You just have to stick around long enough to hear it.
That was such a powerful message