We Are Not a Single Story

I was inspired today by hearing and watching (on the TED Radio Hour)  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian woman novelist.   She told of the misunderstandings that people settle upon when they assume that the one aspect of another’s personality or culture is all there is to the person or to a people. 

Miss Adichie’s story and life experience suggested structure and gave voice to some inchoate thoughts we probably all have had, or at least I have had as people come to know me, or we have come to ‘know’ each other, at a superficial level.  It is at this level that stereotypes develop.  And stereotypes are always incomplete. 

Years ago when I was a master’s degree student at Northern Arizona University I took some physical education classes and quickly obtained the moniker ‘Cosmo’ by some of my classmates. I was surprised that these new friends initially assumed that because when I was in their presence I always wore gym shorts and tee shirt, and was seen by them in a gymnasium or an athletic field that I was ‘only a jock.’  The nickname ‘Cosmo’ (short for ‘Cosmopolitan,’ suggesting familiarity with a broad understanding of the world) was soon affixed when in conversation or in academic sports science classes I, without conscious effort, revealed that I knew something about the world and history and ideas and science and literature and not just the rules of volleyball or how to score a wrestling match, or even recite the Latin names for the bones and muscles of the human body. 

The problem is that too often people only know a single story pertaining to us. 

The roles we play, the ‘hats’ we wear, the titles we are known by, our ethnicity, our speaking accent, the vocabulary we use, the entertainments we frequent, the things we laugh at, the people we gravitate toward all suggest aspects of our personality, things we value, duties we assume, and multiple stories that we live that are known only in part by people who encounter us in that part.  That is one of the dangers, I am told, of being a character actor in the entertainment industry.  People assume, wrongly, that is who you are—if you let them.  You are really much more.

In reality, our ‘stories’ are complex.  A life well-lived is made up of many chapters as we seek to develop our characters.  Breadth and depth are sought for and fought for daily.  Or they should be.  And then, submission to an astute, but kindly editor is what we all need to bring coherence to the story of our life.  

Finally what emerges is a developed theme. Of course we, or others, won’t know that until the day we die.  

That is, then, what comprises ‘the rest of the story,’ the story that becomes, in final analysis the legacy of our life—at least in this chapter.  Or, to mix the metaphor slightly, as my theology teaches, in this, Act 2, of a three-act play.  

Indeed, I believe it is a never-ending story—for who knows the details of Act 3?