Everyone is a story.
I haven’t had the energy to write on my blog much anymore; that energy and time is going into political activism, as I do my bit to keep the US from becoming a Russian-puppet state and from being looted by a family gang of thieves.
5calls.org has been helpful for me, a “political action for dummies” forum as I find my feet in this new arena. At 66, I am surprised at my ability to change and learn in this new arena. This new journey has invigorated me, even as the daily news reports of my country’s illness hurt my heart.
I am re-reading one of my favorite books, Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.; her writing is a meditative way to start my day. This bit from her book caught me this morning: “When we haven’t the time to listen to each other’s stories we seek out experts to tell us how to live. The less time we spend together at the kitchen table, the more how to books appear in the stores, and on our bookshelves. But reading such books is a very different thing than listening to someone’s lived experience.”
I have lived this when I teach the medical students. When they asked me why women don’t breastfeed, I encouraged them to ask each mother. I am deemed an expert because I have heard many stories, and their hope is that I have distilled what those stories have taught me into pearls of wisdom that I can dispense to students in a short amount of time. But that is not the type of learning that goes deeply into one’s soul; it is a People magazine approach to education that is entertaining and captures thoughts for a moment, and then, is buried or forgotten when the next expert speaks and dispenses their pearls. Real learning takes time.
Stories teach. I hope that if I am blessed with a grandchild one day, that precious person will hear stories told around the kitchen table, instead of seeing the tops of the heads of its family looking at their phones.
