Storytime in America

I was in Gulu when I met Sean Carasso. I'd heard his name buzz around the Invisible Children circle, typically coupled with words like "amazing" or "inspiring." They were right.

One night we were all discussing our various days in northern Uganda when Sean broke in. Looking at the IC staffers around him, he said something like, "Any one of your days would be like the best day of the year for anyone in America." Though I appreciated the thought I didn't take it very literally. For one, Sean's a prolifically enthusiastic and encouraging person, and tends towards the superlative in his descriptions of life. But more than that, many of my days felt like jumping five hundred hurdles or diving into a river of molasses and swimming to the other side. They didn't always feel like the day of the year.

But now that I'm back in America I realize that he was more right than I thought. And I know that because of the stories that people tell here - stories of minute restaurant mishaps or forgettable mispeakings from months before. We all know that the center of any story is its conflict. The conflicts in most American stories are minimal - these stories are a million in a million; everyone's got one. The reason Sean considered our Gulu days so amazing, I think, is that they represented overcoming bigger conflicts - language and culture barriers, transportation hardships, a 21-year war, sickness, death.

My friend John and his wonderful fiance Bernadine (henceforward Bernie) told me a great story a couple nights ago. It was about their trip to Europe this summer, when they lost their bags and were late for most every flight and it rained every day and their hotel rooms were given away and the wheels fell off their last piece of luggage. Although it was about a vacation, ultimately it was a story about conflict, about challenges and hardship and overcoming, and so it struck a deeper chord in me, and obviously in them (they have a whole notebook full of reminders of their mishaps) than any number of stories about people getting steak when they had specifically told the waitress they were vegetarians (or whathaveyou). In fact, they say only half-jokingly that this story proves that they will have a good marriage.

It makes me think that people are wired for overcoming hardship. That's what walking upright with big brains and thumbs is all about. We hate to run into problems, but we never feel better than when we overcome them, and those are the stories that we'll tell for years to come. I think that we as Americans have become too afraid of things like uncertainty, challenge, insecurity, conflict. I know I have been that way, and ever since returning to the States I can sense it all around me. And our stories are suffering for it.