A Story

Once a month, at the Swallow Hill Music Hall in Denver there is a gathering of people. To listen to strangers share their fears, accomplishments, comedy, sadness, and adventure. It’s beautiful to watch someone walk up on stage, brave enough to speak out loud some of the most vulnerable details of their lives. This is the Moth story slam.

10 stories. Five minutes. Three judging teams. One slide whistle. One winner and a theme.

I’ve been to the Moth a few times now and listened to people share narratives about love, dirt, collaboration, and control. You never know where the evening will end up. You might find yourself in a backyard while a man gains the trust of a wild dog, or with a couple as they race down a mountain trail while lightning strikes all around them. Each one unique and captivating.

In Bob Goff’s latest book, Everybody Always, he talks about the power of extravagant love and excessive grace. It makes me a little sad because when I look around, I see that we have too little of this. We have too little compassion and empathy for one another.

It’s all about ourselves; how can we be better, how can we make more money, how can we climb the ladder a little higher. We are so tired from the constant focus on self-improvement that somehow we don’t even have enough grace for ourselves.

In medical school, we talk a lot about becoming compassionate and empathic doctors. We have communications sessions where we “practice” talking to patients. These are supposed to help us refine our language to include open-ended questions, to demonstrate empathy, and to learn to listen to the patient’s concerns, think of how all their symptoms come together and know what comes next. I struggle with this a little bit because we can practice saying the words, “that must have been difficult for you” instead of “I’m sorry”, but as much as we practice, it won’t help us be authentic when we find ourselves in a patient room. In order to do that, we need to pull from within our own experiences of hardship or loss, celebration or joy.

This is where our stories come in, as they shape our identities and our actions. They allow us to relate to one another, to stretch our minds to consider another person’s point of view, and to be true to our hearts when we speak.

There’s something so powerful in the words “Me Too”. They say I hear you, I see you, and I know you. In “Me Too” there is an overflow of extravagant love and an abundance of grace, but we can’t get there if we don’t know our own stories first.