Using Stories To Heal Ourselves

“A great story is what results when humanizing wisdom and grace, and technical and aesthetic craft operating at their highest frequencies, kiss each other.”

So writes Gareth Higgins, an author and advocate, a peace activist who grew up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, a period of sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics. One of the tools that Higgins uses is storytelling, which he uses to illustrate the concept of “belief.”

“I grew up in a society that saw them, what you could call the worst manifestation of what happens when you unconsciously accept a story of us versus them,” Gareth told me in a recent interview. “And that is the worst manifestations. You end up killing each other. And if you start from the premise that your story is correct and you don’t question your story, you might very well be likely to cause suffering to others and certainly to yourself, unless the story you believe is that the evolution of humanity is one that’s pointing toward more connection and not more separation toward more shared and individual responsibility and not more selfishness and scapegoating toward what I call community creativity and the common good.”

Existential beliefs

When you believe in something so wholeheartedly, it gives meaning to your existence, but when those beliefs conflict with what others think, there can be discord. The challenge for storytellers is to use its methods to reveal inner truths that lie underneath beliefs and, when brought to light, can create new understandings.

“And the truth is, someone always needs to go first,” says Gareth. “There always needs to be someone who has enough grounding and stability within themselves to be the first to say, I’m going to listen to you. I’m going to put aside my prejudices. I’m going to put aside my insistence in getting it my way. Now, if there’s actual physical danger or real risk in the room, we need to take steps to protect people.”

Padraig Ó Tuama, a poet, theologian and peace activist in Northern Ireland, writes, “We need stories of belonging that move us towards each other, not from each other; ways of being human that open up the possibilities of being alive together; ways of navigating our differences that deepen our curiosity, that deepen our friendship, that deepen our capacity to disagree, that deepen the argument of being alive.”

Finding commonality

When you strip away the externals, you get to the core of what people seek: equality, justice, love. What holds them apart are beliefs nurtured by generations of difference, people defining themselves by what they are not rather than what they are. Doing this opens up the possibility of creating a community.

Joining us in the interview with Gareth was Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, and himself, a well-published author on food, business, and leadership. “There’s a lot of anger and a lot of frustration and fear,” says Ari. “If we work together collaboratively, we can untangle all of that and create a positive outcome that would be acknowledging in Gareth’s context the truth of the difficult story of the past, but also holding a positive belief about what we can collaboratively, peacefully create together.”

The true power of storytelling lies with its capacity to provoke us to re-examine our beliefs, gain insights into the beliefs of others and then begin the process of affirming our willingness to learn and understand. Such practices are never easy, but they are necessary if we are to find ways to bridge differences as a means of creating conditions at home and at work that are nurturing, productive and safe.

Note: Click here to watch to the full interview with Gareth Higgins and Ari Weinzweig.