The Challenge of Listening While Creating Content.
+Why it’s so important to share life lived stories in an open dialogue.
I want to try something new and mix things up. It can get a little old just throwing my thoughts out there.
It’s the nature of a writing challenge, everything is focused on getting your thoughts on the page but it’s also the Achilles heel in constant content creation.
At some point, you become the preacher on the podium rather than the individual in community dialogue.
Today, rather than preach my thoughts to the web I found myself exploring new and familiar authors I enjoy on Medium. (And elsewhere but we’ll focus on Medium.)
Oddly enough, (or perhaps perfectly if you’re a fan of synchronicity) the articles I was drawn to each develop another perspective on personal insight, vision, and the exploration of the world.
Creating a greater narrative about the importance of consistent interaction and the shaping of the future through the sharing of our stories.
I’d like to invite you to travel with me as we explore some of the conversations on Medium.
Our need to play.
Zat Rana shared an awesome piece today on the nature of play and how necessary it is that we continue to explore the world.
One of his main points is that due to the constant flux of society we must always be discovering the new rules of the game. The new ways to interact and relate to the world around us.
Zat starts his story with Newton, a genius who for the most part lived in isolation due to his fascination with nature, physics, and alchemy.
In a way, Newton was an endless content creator. Constantly preaching his insights but not playing much in the social realms.
Instead, his play was in the realms of nature. He then shared this with the world.
Since Newton’ss subject of play was fixed, “laws of physics,” and his society was slower to move, he could go out, play and discover in the realm of nature, and then come back to write a book and share it with the world.
He didn’t have to figure out academic publishing, corporate publishing, private publishing, building a platform, email lists, Twitter, Instagram, Medium, or internet slang.
Neither was he concerned with the fashions of the day. His eyes were on the eternal and he wrote what he saw.
Today we have to figure out how the truths we experience or learn can interact with the world.
For instance, what does Newton’s renown for math and physics but complete obscurity in the realms of alchemy teach us about the evolution of the Western mind?
How does this affect society? The lives of the individual?
How do we talk about this? What does it change?
The narratives we create.
Brian Merchant has a fantastic piece on the current use of sci-fi modeling by corporations around the world. I was ecstatic when reading it. I didn’t know this was happening.
I have always sensed sci-fi authors were in their own ways prophets of future times and in my closeted sci-fi writings, sci-fi authors are referred to as the dreamers of technology. Often times more important to the character’s conversation than the actual inventors.
I was so excited about Brian’s article that I checked out his other work and found this prophetic piece on the election of Trump and the choosing of a dystopian narrative.
I really appreciate the way he speaks to narrative and the way that our stories shape the world because they shape our vision.
If we’re not playing, if we’re not exploring the unknown as Zat encourages us then we are trapped within these fixed narratives.
As Brian points out these are often lazy narratives that take the most dramatic approach to things rather than really thinking and mapping out the future.
For instance, what does it say that corporations are so involved in trying to create the future they’ve modeled? Where are the individuals? Where is the human population beyond our logos and consumables?
Who is dreaming our movements? Our culture? Our society?
We have to play in these realms. We have to dream, share, and talk about the future.
We have to let go of the lazy narratives that say “it’s just how the world is.” “Corporations are too big.” “Government is corrupt.” “The Bible says so.”
Being open to other stories.
Jonas Ellison published an article on being Christian while making space for other people’s beliefs.
This is what allows the opening of our narratives. Sharing what is important to us, in Jonas’s case the experience of grace, while making room for others to share their stories.
This is how we model a future. We explore the realms unknown. We play with others, exchange ideas.
If we’re too quick to say “this is how it is,” we will blind to the other 7 billion voices saying the world is another way.
This leaves us blind to the future and all the trends that go into creating and establishing it. The narratives all around us.
We have to start talking. To do more than preaching. We have to make space to listen.
The importance of living our story.
Irina Achim shared a piece on the importance of a lived story rather than the adoption of tips from someone else.
The stories we live take on a deeper meaning. They’re not simply “facts,” we think we know, they are KNOWN in the body.
When we try to run with someone else’s self-help book we are only engaging with a surface level thought that is having to compete with the hundreds of other suggestions we’ve heard.
However, when we engage in deep internal reflection we are able to better understand the things our body already knows.
This may sound contradictory to the idea of sharing stories and narratives amongst diverse audiences to open up our perspective of the future, but I believe they go hand in hand.
From my experience, stories from our life affect people more than tips from our books. Stories create new narratives that our minds can flow through.
They create new understandings of the world.
And something about the fact that they were truly lived gives them more weight in the psyches of others and in ourselves when we hear another person’s true story.
Personally, I’ve found myself in other people’s stories. Sometimes this is psychological, an experience of “I’ve been there, but I didn’t even think of it that way,” or “I’m glad I’m not alone” and sometimes I’ve literally found myself in another person’s story.
Like Phillip Dick’s story of breaking down at a gas station and finding himself in a scene he himself had written in one of his books, a scene he related to a passage from the Bible.
I’ve walked straight into a scene from my writing before and was able to think to myself “this is like Phillip K. Dick.”
Because I’ve heard the story I already know aspects of its narrative and I have more room to feel into it my own unique perspective. To gain insight from my own experience and those of others.
When we share the stories we have lived rather than the tips others have given we add a whole new layer of depth to the global conversation.
No more fleetings memes of “studies say” or propaganda but rather something of depth, something that can move you from the inside out.
The weaving of the muse.
Ethan Hawley shares how these stories want to be told and when they are seen, when they are worked on, and shared they take on a life of their own and shape the world around us.
Perhaps creating a future where we can all play. Where we can all continuously learn. No longer held back by “this is how it is” but rather freed to dream a future of the greatest quality.
No lazy plot line, no appeals to drama, fear, or hate.
Rather a collective dream of the world’s neurons, our personal stories, lived, shared, and integrated into a better tomorrow.
Let’s start the conversation. Let’s take back our power and dream the future.
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts on binary paper.
If you’d like to join me on this journey you can sign up for my email list here.
