Growing Up with Stories: Lessons in Empathy and Understanding

As a child, I loved to read. Curling up with a good book was my go-to. I had to be pushed out of the house to go play with the neighborhood kids because I was so engrossed in the fascinating stories I found on the page. I was a fiction-lover because I could be the girl from the 1690s struggling with being a stranger in a strange land, or one from the 1890s navigating being an orphan, or being a part of a sibling group heading out on adventure. I didn’t realize that with each book I read, I was not only flying through adventures. I was also learning something about history, how to interact with other people, and the way that different people respond to situations. Books transport us to other lands and teach us about cultural exchange without us even realizing. Through the stories, imagined or not, that people share with basis in their culture, their upbringing, their relationships, we learn how similar we all are. When I am reading, I could be from Tehran or Cuba or Prince Edward Island because I feel the same emotions that the main characters feel when I enter their world.

We don’t need a fancy cover to enter into someone else’s world. We just need to be willing to listen to someone else’s story. While each one of us is the main character in our own story it is crucial to remember that as important as my own story is to me, so are the stories of others to them.

I’m spending a week with a group of students diving into the impact of stories. My story. Their story. Your story. Our story. We learn about who we are through the way we share and the things that we put into the world. The students are grappling with challenging questions like, “Is the story I’m hearing just as important if I don’t know WHOSE story it is because the protagonist doesn’t have a name?”, and, “Is my story just as important as someone who has fame and power?”, or, “Is it disrespectful for me to ‘put myself in someone else’s shoes’ when I’m never actually going to be able to experience the emotions they experienced?”

We keep circling these questions with the thread that pulls them together – the willingness to encounter someone else. Storytelling has the power to shift perspectives, foster inclusion, and inspire action in our daily lives because we suddenly understand that we have kinship with someone else. We are given a glimpse into someone else’s world that offers us a way to make a connection. Logically we can understand and emotionally we can connect when we have context and a person, real or imagined, that is reaching out to us and helping us to see ourselves in them.

I watch as my son and daughter are just starting to enter into this wonderful world of reading. Their beginning reader chapter books are short, but my kids connect with the characters. They love the Magic Treehouse Series and talk about the characters as if they are real people. When my son says, “I know about that because of Annie!” or my daughter exclaims “remember when Jack talked about that!” it reminds me, yet again, of the power of storytelling to help us create a community that is united through shared experiences and connections.

Written by Christina Vela

REACH Advisor and Director of Diversity & Kinship / Spanish Teacher at Regis Jesuit High School