Your Story Matters As Much as Mine

Our shared stories unite us across generations and cultures

After I praised Disney’s new version of Snow White in last week’s newsletter, a friend sent me a link to a spirited defense of the 1937 version. There’s validity in these arguments. As the writer notes, “It’s important that [the original] Snow White can lose everything, be driven through hell, fall down at death’s door, and still hold tight to her optimism and that good old American Dream. Her story isn’t about changing — it’s about enduring. It’s about showing that no matter how cruel or unfair life gets, some people can still hold on to their decency, kindness, and hope.”

The irony is that the 2025 version stays true to that fundamental message. It just also has Snow White standing up to tyranny at great personal risk and restoring liberty to her people. But there seems to be a perception that the two narratives are mutually exclusive. You cannot appreciate them both. 

Stories Impart the Values that Hold Society Together

There’s an important reason that we get so worked up about stories. It is that our stories hold our society together. They provide us with a shared sense of right and wrong, heroism and cowardice, desirable and undesirable behaviour. 

To illustrate, I’m going to share a personal story. When I was a journalist assigned to cover the sexual assault and murder of a little girl in her own neighborhood, my editor wanted me to get a comment from the child’s bereaved family. That was my job and I felt intense pressure to do it. 

As I drove with a sickened heart to the town where the tragedy occurred, I remembered two stories. One was about the discussion that happened in my home when a politician got caught in an affair, and a journalist rushed to the man’s home, stuck a microphone in his wife’s face, and asked her to comment. My family and I roundly condemned that kind of sensation-driven reporting that victimizes people who are already hurting. 

I also remembered reading about a photojournalist who was sent to cover a family tragedy; a grandfather had backed a vehicle over his little grandson. The journalist quietly entered a room where he saw the griefstricken grandfather holding the face of the lifeless child. He knew that this would be a Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo at the same instant that he comprehended that this grief was private. So he did not take the picture. I remembered hearing that story and resolving to be that kind of a person. 

Those two stories gave me the courage to resist the pressure to show up on the bereaved family’s doorstep and ask them for a comment about their little girl’s murder. I was not going to invade their grief and privacy.  Instead, I prayed, then went to the florist and purchased a bouquet. I wrote a note, expressing my condolences and letting them know that I was a journalist assigned to cover the story. I was here, parked nearby, if they wanted to talk to me. But if they didn’t, I would drive away. Then I knocked on a neighbour’s door and asked her to deliver the bouquet for me.

It turned out the mother really did want to talk. Heartbroken, she invited me into her home and shared her firm assurance that her little girl was now in Jesus’ arms. Sitting with her felt like being on sacred ground. And it was an honour to share her enormous faith with our readers. 

That is the power of stories. It’s not the lists of dos and don’ts that really teach us to practice kindness, courage, compassion, faithfulness and so forth. It’s the stories that show the impact of such principles in action, or the pain that results from their absence. It’s the stories that get our moral or ethical code into our hearts, where they govern our actions. 

We Disconnect with Exclusive Stories

Social cohesion depends on our holding such shared stories. But, with the diversifying of our media, we’ve fragmented into communities of exclusive stories with in-group language. These train us to mistrust people who use different language and rely on different stories, even though we all value kindness, courage, compassion and faithfulness, etc, but with different modes for expressing them in practice. 

Let’s take, as an example, the disparate social communities to which my eldest daughter and I belong. 

Socially, I tend conservative, largely because I’m a devout Christian and I look to scripture and church history as primary sources of my stories. 

My daughter leans anarchist. She grew up with the same stories that have informed my values, and they’ve had a formative impact on hers. But the abuse she experienced from people who claimed authority over her led her to reject the concept of authority. 

As she transitioned out of my faith community into the social space she now calls home, her primary stories changed and so did the way she practices reverence. My sense of reverence is connected to holding awe for God and for the transcendent. This even affects the words I use. I don’t swear, and strong language sounds to me like nails on a chalkboard. Meanwhile, my daughter rejects the idea of submitting to (and being less than) some mighty, external authority. She has no interest in what seems to her to be arbitrary notions of permissible language.  For her, strong language feels like a way of reclaiming her voice and being authentic. 

At first, I interpreted her use of strong language around me as a show of disrespect. I expected her not to swear in my presence. She interpreted this as rejection and our time together became fraught. There didn’t seem to be any safe subjects for conversation and a chasm of disconnection started to grow between us. Then I realized that my language requirements were sending her a message that she didn’t belong. So we re-evaluated with an emphasis on belonging and mutual consideration. Now, she watches her language in my home, because she wants me to feel comfortable in my space. But I don’t take issue with her swearing around me. 

We Can Recreate Belonging with Shared Stories

Another thing we did to close the chasm was we found some new shared stories. When she was little, I used to read novels to her all the time. As she grew, she got into the habit of reading to me while I made supper or did other chores. Now, she had a whole new world of stories she was enjoying that were inaccessible to me, because I was put off by the language and the sex scenes (another area of significant difference). But she wanted to share them, so she started reading them aloud over the phone, skipping the scenes I didn’t want to hear and replacing the expletives with mild substitutes. We continue this to today, and I love the stories she shares with me, especially the ones she writes herself. They have helped to pull us back together. They’ve also broadened my horizons. I have discovered blind spots that were tripping me up without my even being aware of them. I’ve questioned traditions that weren’t serving me. And my faith has deepened even as my worldview has become more nuanced. I like who I’ve become as I’ve been learning from loved ones who differ from me in significant ways. 

I think the frustrations and disconnection that my daughter and I experienced in the story above reflect a phenomenon that’s occurring on a macro level. The bulk of the stories staged on Broadway and in Hollywood have content that makes them inaccessible to people with sensibilities like mine. There are universal themes that would resonate across our divides, if only they were cast in a connective context. But when you stage a Broadway show in a local community theatre, you aren’t free to remove content that offends community sensibilities, without permission. And that permission can be hard to get across a divide that’s been widening due to both sides feeling judged and rejected by the other. Generally, we’ve become a lot more interested in getting the other side to see the error of their ways than we are in connecting across our differences. And when the other side resists, we just retreat into telling amongst ourselves the stories that uphold our exclusive way of seeing things. Then we all lose out – on collective wisdom and on relationship with each other. 

This is why we need a new brand of musical theatre that can reconnect us with each other at the same time that it lifts our vision and deepens our understanding. It’s why Summit Stages seeks to create such musicals and become that brand. 

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