"But there’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking."This is what I learned today. We did in an exercise in my class at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute where each person in class rotated in and out of three roles: interviewer, interviewee, and videographer. Before we started, our professor had us call out banal objects and she wrote them down on the whiteboard: rock, chair, man, wall, etc. Then when the three people whose turn it was got into their positions, she would choose one, and the interviewer would have to begin asking the interviewee questions about this object. It was marvelous the surprisingly interesting stories that came out of asking someone about the chairs in their home or a memorable rock in their life. It's incredible the memories and emotions and thoughts we attach to objects in our lives. Our memories belong to the "things" we touch and see. They lay there until we call upon them to remind us of our past, of what has made us who we are today.
We should dare to ask these questions more often. Ask a friend, how did that picture get on your wall? Ask a neighbor or the person next to you in line at the grocery store, how did you get that scar on your face? We should dare to ask one question like this every day. Never resign to just wondering about something. The world is an incredible place full of stories and chapters we've never imagined if we're just willing to open its pages. Dare to seek out the stories of the people around us. Dare to learn something new. Dare to see and hear the world for what it is, and not be limited by what we think we already know of it. Every day asks us to be courageous. Rise to the challenge.
Note: This was also a great exercise in learning how to interview. There was more to the process than what I described above. Happy to share if anyone is ever looking for ideas on teaching interviewing.
