Skip to main content

The Collective Story

By
"What kind of story are we in?"

This appears to be a very simple question; however, it requires much introspection as well as extrospection. Of course, it is easiest to start with the self. My life (what has happened, is happening, and will happen) is my own narrative, my own story. My story is mine and nobody else’s. Nobody shares the exact same narrative as I do; neither the people that surround me nor the people I confide in. It is a powerful idea, but also a lonely one.
The same goes for everyone else. We are all main characters of our own narratives and no two narratives look exactly alike. Other people might pass through our narratives - some lasting for multiple chapters, others staying only for a few sentences - but we do not share full-length narratives. Even the moments that we share with other characters do not result in the same story due to different understandings, perceptions, and memory flaws. This idea follows one of Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle’s five narrative theses: “Stories are multiple: there is always more than one story” (qtd. in McQuillan 3).


However, the question posed asks about the collective. If we each have an individual narrative, where is the collection of these narratives? Is there a giant entity that hosts all of our stories? Is there someone or something that combines all of the multi-sided stories like a book with chapters that alternate points of view? We probably all have different ideas of who or what holds this infinite narrative. Some might bring up religion. Others might say the collection of stories is what creates history or society.


But even that’s not completely true. Another of Bennet and Royle’s narrative theses states, “The telling of a story is always bound in power, property, and domination” (qtd. In McQuillan 3). Individually, our personal narrative is our inherent truth but collectively the story that is told (or found to be the truth) is the “winning side.” As the saying goes, history is written by the winners. Those in power tend to have an easier job of creating narratives for other groups. The dominators try to mold the narrative of the world, the collective story, to encourage their goals. Luckily, we know there is multiplicity in stories so we do not have to take the dominating story as truth.


Therefore, I believe we are in a story of growth, development, and perseverance. Our narratives, although extremely different from each other, share these three traits. Every individual grows throughout his or her story, whether the narrator is a human, a country, or an animal. Each individual narrator develops throughout the story. I am not talking about physical development (that’s covered in growth), but mental, spiritual, and ethical development. Finally, every story includes perseverance. Individual narrators continuously fight in the power struggle of denying one truth for another, whether it be textbooks white-washing history or family members remembering events differently. To think about our collective story - the story that we are all a part of - requires us to remember that stories are bound in power and every narrative is unique.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"You don't look like your dad!" Tales of Legal Adoption

By Anonymous
"You don't look like your dad. You must be the spitting image of your mother!" or "Your brothers look just like your dad! I bet you take after your momma." I heard these statements a lot growing up. And it's true. I don't look like my dad. And for a while, I didn't really look like my mom. I do now, but that isn't the point. You see, my dad adopted me when I was around six or seven years old. He had been a part of my life, for, well, all of it. When my mother and biological father (sometimes I refer to him as my sperm donor, because I think it's funny, but his name is Chris), got divorced, my dad, Kenny, married my mom resulting in a blended family of me, who was biologically my mom's, and my two brothers, who were biologically his. Suddenly I went from being the only child to being the middle child in a family dynamic that takes a lot of explaining to do. They say divorce and the things I supposedly went through in my early childhood...
Post a Comment
Read more

I'm adopted and I have trust issues. Here's why:

By
I grew up knowing that I was adopted. I’m a fair-skinned freckled brunette who never grew past 4’10” so I fit in photographs just fine with my brunette mother and blonde father who adopted me at birth. When I was little, they told me stories about how God had sent me to their arms, how they had chosen me, how special I was because I was adopted. The story of Moses was especially prominent, as was Tarzan. I grew up in middle America where everybody still goes to church on Sundays and Wednesdays like clockwork and trusts Disney to raise their children during TV time. My mother was (and still is with my daughter now) a firm believer in keeping children innocent as long as possible. She adores small children and works with them exclusively at the church where she directs the children’s choir and runs the after-school program. My father always had a nonchalant attitude towards these things. He wouldn’t go out of his way to introduce us to things that might be a tad inappropriate, but he...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Calling, No Problem

By
I have no calling in a world where we all wonder what we're meant to do, who we're supposed to be. My mom called me the other day to tell me one of my childhood friends would be moving to my hometown soon because her husband had accepted a job with the Baptist church next door to her Methodist church. I don’t know why she thinks I give a shit about small town gossip or any news that concerns the church seeing as how she’s very aware of how I feel about organized religion. Nevertheless, she has nothing else to tell me because her world is much smaller than mine. “He used to be an airplane pilot,” she says. “Then why is he going to be a youth minister? How will they survive? Where will the money come from?” I ask, appalled. I know from my instagram that his wife is a stay-at-home mom of three. “It doesn’t matter, they’ll figure it out,” she brushes it off. “He has a calling to work for the Lord.” A calling. A goddamn calling. Half of my life, I waited for some fucking ca...
Post a Comment
Read more