Happy Friday, Friends!!!
I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day as a glorious new day begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! I am so excited to live this day…I hope you are too! I believe and declare this is going to be a great one, for I fully intend to make it so! 😊
Last weekend I watched a video that has forever changed me. I am taking a class to get a certification and as a part of it, we were required to watch a YouTube video of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This brilliant woman and speaker titled her talk, “The danger of a single story.” I want to strongly encourage you to google “Adichie Ted Talk” and go watch this 19 minute 17 second video. It is so profound! This is what I want to share with you this morning…the danger of the single story.
To illustrate what she is talking about, Ms. Adichie told the story of a boy who worked for her family. Her Mom told her that this little boy’s family was poor…and nothing else. Ms. Adichie goes on to tell how she once went to the boys home and found that the boys brother had made a beautiful basket…and she was shocked. Because the single story she had been told about this boy and his family was that they were poor, she did not see in her mind that they could be poor AND hardworking.
Ms. Adichie points out that it is ALL our stories that have made us, not just the negative, or positive, ones. She offers that, “to focus only on negative stories is to flatten my experience, to overlook all the others that formed me.”
The consequences of a single story? Ms. Adichie stated, “the consequences of the single story is it robs people of their dignity. It makes recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are similar.”
One other excellent point Ms. Adichie made that I feel I must share before sharing a few thoughts/ideas of my own centers on stereotypes. We love to label people, don’t we? We love to try to put groups of people or places in these nice little boxes where we define them…these are stereotypes. Here is what Ms. Adichie said; “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story the only story.”
Are you, like me when I watched the video for the first time, feeling a little convicted and inspired? Convicted because I know I have been guilty of telling and listening to a single story…and living life based on it. Inspired because my spirit, heart, and mind have now been awakened to the danger of the single story, and I determined to never tell or listen to a single story the rest of my life. The gratitude I feel for Ms. Adichie at this moment is indescribable! Thank you!
None of us are a single story! We are all these beautiful, unique, perfectly created and equipped souls doing the very best we can. (Note, there is a period there!) We have all had successful moments and failing moments. We have all had good and bad things happen to us. We all have things we are proud of and things that we wished had never happened. There is great darkness and light in all our stories. Not one human being is a single story!
A few thoughts/reflections as I have now watched this video 4 or 5 times in the past week:
- What single stories am I telling and, as a result, creating an incomplete picture in someone else’s mind of another person or place? Lord, please forgive me! I don’t want to be a single story teller! Ms. Adichie talked about power as “to tell a story about another person” and to “make it the definitive story of that person.” I don’t want that to be me, and I hope it is not you. Let’s make sure when we are talking about a person or place we are telling the complete story, all of the stories. Better yet, if we have platforms to do so, let’s let them tell their own stories!
- What single stories am I listening to and, as a result, developing thoughts, ideas, and opinions about people and places that is so incomplete it’s shameful! No more! Please know, if you talk to me and want to tell me a story about a person or place you will be challenged. I want to know, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”
- This one hit me profoundly as my small group at church and I were watching this video last Sunday night; what single story are you living about yourself? Yes, Sweet Friend, just as other people and places are not a single story, neither are you. And yet, so many people are still living the failing moment, the dark place, over and over again. Please let this sweet truth wash over you; you are not a single story! You are all of the stories that you have lived up until this moment right now. While I am sure there are failing, bad moments (we all have them), there are also successful, beautiful moments (we all have those too). Get out of the rut and live your life…all of it!
I am going to close with a
few more words from Ms. Adichie:
“Stories matter.
Many stories matter.
Stories have been used to
dispossess and malign, but stories can also be used to empower and humanize.
Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories an also repair that broken dignity.”
What Will Your Influence Be…?
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can contact me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.
Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious families, and please stay well! 😊
Kev
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