March 27, 2021
Storytelling, Marshall Plan for moms, self-actualization
We are, as a species, addicted to stories. We tell stories all the time to ourselves and anyone else who will listen. Even when we go to sleep, our mind stays up, telling stories to itself. Storytelling is, in a fundamental sense, our raison d’etre. It is part of human design and it is what makes living bearable. Joan Didion said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” It is an ancient past time. It’s not hard to visualize the first men and women sitting around a fire, gazing at the stars, wondering where it all came from, and telling each other stories to comfort themselves.
Over the years, I’ve collecting advice on the art and the science of storytelling. Yes, while great stories come from the heart, they are crafted in the mind. I figured I’d share a nugget each week from my learnings on ‘how to tell a story.’ Who knows, this may inspire you to write a story yourself. Since this is the first of its kind today, I’ll start with ‘How to prepare to tell a story.’
Storytelling, like life, involves making a lot of choices. The first one is between having a structured plot line and winging it and making it up as the story evolves. You could work it all out ahead of time or simply surrender to the moment and see where it goes. Regardless of whether you decide to flesh the plot out or not, there are essential questions you must answer before you can put pen to paper. Who is the protagonist? Who is the narrator? The interesting thing about stories is that these two are not always the same. In life, we like to think of ourselves as the protagonists and the narrators. But, we have to wonder. Is it me who is narrating my story or is it the world that is telling a piece of its story through me? As is the case with such questions, the answer is both.
Once you’ve answered the ‘Who’ question, then come the rest of the 5 Ws: What, When, Where and Why. What is it about? When does it take place? Where does it happen? Chronologically, where does the story start? In the middle and goes backwards? Or, is it linear with a beginning, a middle and an end? Why do the things that happen in the story happen? Is there a guiding principle, a moral arc or an invisible hand that guides the events? Is anyone in charge? Storytelling is creation itself; creating order from chaos and something from nothing. It is diving into a sea of meaninglessness and emerging with pearls of meaning. It is the greatest metaphor for life itself. There are really no rules. There are only choices. You do not have to start from the beginning. You can start anywhere you like. But, remember: all stories always start in the middle. There is always a backstory. Even the story of your life doesn’t start with your birth. It comes in the middle of the stories of your parents, and theirs in the middle of their parents, and so it goes. There is only one rule: The story must be evocative. There is nothing more tragic than a story that is either unfinished or forgotten or both. Next week, I’ll get into ‘characters’ and what it takes to introduce them and bring them to life.
Reshma Saujani is angry, frustrated, tired and determined. Angry at the enormous damage the pandemic has done to women. Frustrated that the pandemic has set back progress of the last thirty years. Tired from her own struggles to balance life and work and determined to continue her mission to close the gender gap in tech. She’s spent the past year engaged in the same epic juggling of millions of single moms across America - trying to work a fulltime job while managing remote learning for a young child while trying to cook a meal everyone will eat while helping her aged parents. She’s also one of the fortunate women with more resources and support than most. She is the CEO of Women Who Code. And she has a radical idea that she calls the Marshall Plan for Moms. A central feature of the plan, and also its most controversial aspect, is a call to provide monthly payments of $2,400 to moms in need. The daughter of Indian refugees from Uganda (who escaped when Idi Amin unleashed genocide), her proposal caught the attention of the Biden administration and some aspects have already made it into the two trillion dollar stimulus plan that passed recently. These are the stories of our times.
I’ve been mulling the general problem of why being creative gets harder as we age. The short version of the answer I’ve arrived at is “baggage.” Beyond a certain age (the mid forties), we become enmeshed in a vicious loop. To be creative and valuable so we can make money and have time, we need to clear the baggage we’ve accumulated till then. But, we need to accumulate enough money and time first before we can clear the decks. Very few escape this loop. This loop is a fundamentally hard problem to solve. Aggressively insisting on beliefs like ‘you’re never too old’ for this or that, or that ‘you’re only as old as you feel’ can feel tediously delusional. Yes, with the right mindset, you can stay mentally alive and (say) learn a new language or musical instrument or acquire new athletic prowess. But, you’ll likely do no more than improve your mental and physical health, while producing some outcomes that will, at best, cause younger people in their prime to politely applaud. “Look, this middle aged dude ran a marathon. How sweet.” Mere mindset shifts are just ways to buy graceful aging and not eternal youth or immortality, which are even more dubious things to purchase anyway.
What if I am bored with or not interested in immortality and eternal youth, but want to do more than just age gracefully? What if I don’t want to repeat or level-up whatever I have already done in my 20s and 30s? What if I want to do something that explores the interesting-ness potential of my accumulated experiences? What if I don’t want to throw everything away and start afresh? A clean sheet condition is too boring, frankly. A case of throwing the old man out with the bathwater.
George Lucas was so successful in his 30s that he described his Act 2 as being able to “afford to make bad movies for the rest of my life.” I have neither succeeded spectacularly like Lucas, nor have I failed miserably that it’s an easy call to toss it all aside. I’m interested in an approach that makes the baggage an asset that is neither good nor bad. In what sense can my baggage be an asset that allows me to craft an Act 2 that nobody else can take on, instead of turning into a sad old bore endlessly trying to top my Act 1? I don’t have clear answers yet but I have a sense for what it might be about.
We tend to view the first acts of our lives as about acquiring “experience.” But, that’s not quite it. Most experience is useless. What we call ‘becoming more experienced’ is really about getting used up or worn down. We get to bank unique but unremarkable memories that make us feel increasingly different from everyone else, even though we are actually becoming indistinguishable from everyone else. Our experiences put us in a black hole in which we are actually in close proximity with others and yet feel deeply disconnected. A hell in which you’re unique just like everyone else. This leads to alienation. The only experiences that actually count in our lives are those that fork us away from others but teach us about how we are actually like everyone else. This leads to self actualization or self awareness or some localized state of nirvana. Awareness arises from our common humanity and not from our freak show talents. We are alone in both awareness and alienation, but feel lonely only in the latter.
Stay safe and have a wonderful week ahead.