Day 17: Strangers with stories

"The universe is made of stories, not atoms". - Muriel Rukeyser

Life becomes a lot more interesting and your interactions with people become a lot more meaningful when you realise you are dealing with a whole lot of told and untold stories.

I love stories. I like reading them. I like hearing them. I like sharing them. That is the reason why for a while, I considered being a journalist, I would be hearing, reporting and sharing stories for a living. Not bad huh?

I did Dale Carnegie's effective communication course for a couple of months once and the course was all about having more effective conversations with people. One thing we learnt on the first day was that people love talking about themselves. Apparently Dale Carnegie went to this dinner party once and sat next to a man, who upon leaving, told the host Mr Carnegie was the best conversationalist the man had ever encountered. The man spoke for four hours, Mr. Carnegie spoke for 2 minutes. This highlights the importance of being a good listener and asking the right questions. Everyone loves talking about themselves, you just have to lend an eager ear to hear the stories. I strive to be a better conversationalist, someone who can not only talk for 4 hours but someone who can also talk for 2 minutes and listen for 4 hours.

I think one of the reasons why I like travelling so much is because I can discover untold stories and meet people who have stories completely different from mine. I could hear moving stories of how people my age survived war, stories of passion, funny anecdotes involving alcohol, family dramas etc. All I needed to do was ask the right question, listen with ears and mind open and follow it up with more questions. It's amazing how some of my most memorable encounters involve story telling with strangers...who are not really strangers any more because of the stories we have shared.

I once again realised that I didn't need to go travel to uncover stories. There are so many untold stories at home itself. I did a couple more night shifts at my mum's workplace with a couple of elderly ladies. These ladies, in their 40s and 50s, Caucasian, born and raised in NZ, with kids and grandkids, basic school education were very different from me. Both lovely and very nurturing but it was hard to find a common ground. Our first couple of nights were very professional with awkward small talk factored in every now and then. However, yesterday at my last night shift, instead of my reading my book, I decided to hear a story, a real one with real people. So I tried to start a conversation. There were 8 hours ahead of us and several anecdotes and life stories to be shared.

Time flew by as we got talking. I found out all about their experience of working in night shifts. I found out how and when they met their spouses, their fondest memories of their kids' childhoods, what it was like to be a grandmum etc etc. These are conversations I would never have had with people from their backgrounds otherwise. These stories would have never been shared if one of us did not take the first step to open up and ask questions. The "stranger" would have not been seen as a "mum" or "grandmum" or "Waiheke" resident if we hadn't seeked each others stories.

Life becomes more interesting as we unravel a new story. I really want to keep up with this "new thing" and become an interrogative journalist of life, befriending "strangers" through the power of stories! New day, new thing, new stories! :)