The Art of Storytelling.
THE ART OF STORYTELLING.
Written by Mwati Tembo
How do you write good story with your life regardless of what elements you were given or not given to begin with?
Some of the greatest movements in history began as stories. Stories that needed to be told, stories that needed to be retold & Stories that need to be rewritten. The Global Pursuit is really a project about the story of humanity. But to tell a good story you need to know what’s true and what isn’t. You need to know the truth about who you are, the truth about others in relation to you, the truth about why you’re here and the truth about who God is.
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This project has been developed, refined and built over 5 years. In those the 5 years, I’ve met and connected with so many women who have all had similar stories to the next, and to my own, despite being so different. Within those 5 years, I’ve been blessed to able to travel to different parts of the world while carrying this vision; collecting stories, memories, ideas in more journals that you would think, not knowing for certain what this thing would look like. From Africa to South-East Asia, to Europe to the middle of Australia in a desert, I’ve met people who have grown up different, look different from me, have belief systems completely different from my own and have different life pursuits, yet, I’ve discovered that we would often use a tool that would connect us beyond what lay on the surface. That tool was our stories.
Here’s what else I learnt:
1. Stories are incredibly powerful.
But you already know this. Stories have the power to connect us to a world beyond our own but if not used well, they can be what isolate us entirely from it. They have the power to build bridges but they also have the power to build walls. We want to be able to build bridges.
2. Stories are meant to be shared.
Our stories represent out lives. We don’t always write stories on our own, nor are they really deigned to be kept to ourselves. In our own lives, whether we believe it or not, simply having people around us means we’ve subscribed to having people help us write our story, re-write it and even edit it. I learnt that the key to a good story is not necessarily how it starts, but who you have around to re-write it with you. That leads me to my third point.
3. We are created for community.
The older I get, the more convinced I am that the greatest resource we have is not our status, money, time, careers or our talents — it’s actually the people in our lives. We all in some way are doing our best to have a positive human experience and we are really honest, we all want the same thing; to belong and to have a reason for being here. Having people around us who can help point us to what truly matters and allow us to be who we are is essential to our purpose and calling.
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With The Global Pursuit, I wanted to tell the right stories. Stories that are linked in such a way that we contribute to a narrative that is far greater than ourselves. But how we tell these stories is what determines the power they have. I’ve spent the last few years studying components, of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Theology. I realised that I care deeply about the emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing of people and how we can function best in our world. I started to see a need in the spaces and communities I found myself in: we can be so surrounded by people and yet feel so alone. This is something that exists across the globe. If there’s one question that fuels this project, it’s this:
Everyone is in pursuit of something but the question is, do you know what it is you’re really searching for?
So this is what The Global Pursuit is really about. It’s about writing a good story and painting a picture on the canvas of your life, regardless of what elements you were given or not given to begin with. The themes of truth, wholeness and purpose are how we express the vision of this project.
In discovering the truth of our stories and then telling these stories well, we first need to heal.
We need to at least be on the journey of healing and restoration in our lives otherwise we’ll always tell stories from places of deep pain and even deeper wounds. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if we aren’t getting well, those stories won’t help others be well either. We risk doing more damage to ourselves and to those around us. That’s where wholeness comes in. When we aren’t becoming whole, we only identify ourselves by the broken parts of our story and we tell our stories as victims rather that conquerers. We tell them with hopelessness, disappointment and resentment rather than with hopefulness.
As you heal internally, you’re able to better look to those around you, externally and identify their needs.
How many of you know that we cannot best love and support others when we’re at a deficit ourselves? Purpose begins you start to first believe you can actually re-write your story and even help others do the same. Purpose is never necessarily about us — it’s about others. However, it greatly involves us.
When we’re living in purpose, we’re simply using what’s in our hands — our gifts, our talents and our skills to be a part of the greater narrative. We get to do that with those around us and the crazy part is that you never know who you’re going to reach or where your story will be carried, but we all can be part of some of the greatest stories ever told.