The Story Eunuch

Have you ever brainstormed a list of fantasy jobs, or simply fun ways to earn money?  Nels and I do this regularly, usually on the deck while listening to music and drinking beer.  We generate possible names for bands, pithy sayings for Magic Hat beer caps, themed music playlists, and so on.  

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a market for this enterprise, despite the plethora of boring or downright offensive band names (Old 97’s=yawn, Popa Chubby=gross) or beer cap wisdom (Minds Awaken on Roads Less Taken=cool; A beer in hand is worth 2 in the Fridge=yawn).  My latest favorite potential band name is Meat Bat.  I saw it in directions for a recipe to whack chicken breasts to a particular size, but it could also mean a new variety of bat that eats frogs, for instance.  I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never earn a living from Meat Bat.  Damn the internet and its DIY-for free mentality.

Speaking of fantasy jobs, my friend Bryan from yoga teacher training has a great idea.  He theorizes that there are people who want to tell their stories to someone they can trust, knowing that these stories will not get judged or retold.  Bryan would simply listen, without question or expression, not imposing his experience or energy on the story, but just hearing what the person has to say without reacting to it.  When the person left, Bryan would promptly forget the story.  He named this job “The Story Eunuch” because it would be emotionally safe. 

As someone who longs to be heard, this didn’t make much sense to me at first.  I want reaction (with appreciation being especially welcome, thank you very much).   But then I realized that there are lots of stories I tell in my daily journal writing that never make it to a listener or reader.  This writing provides a safe place for making sense of raw experience.  Like the making of sausage, nobody else should be exposed to this process, lest they realize their darkest fears about me, i.e., that I am completely nuts.  For people who don’t use writing as this kind of outlet, however, having a non-reactive listener might be helpful.  It would be a cheaper form of therapy, plus the storyteller would know that Bryan isn’t concocting a way to fix her/him, or even to get her/him to fix her/himself.  

Maybe we all could use a Story Eunuch.  When is the last time you told a story and felt that you were heard without judgment, reactivity, or someone wanting to fix the problem for you?  Or worse, that they would remember that story and always associate it with you, when really, it was just how you felt at that particular moment?  Our stories seem to follow us around.  They gain purchase in the telling and retelling, until even we believe that they convey something more than they actually do.  Stories are powerful arbiters of meaning and identity, whether the meaning is accurate or the identity is truthful.  

Not to put Bryan out of future employment, but I wonder if we each can be our own personal Story Eunuch.  Can we listen to the private stories we tell only ourselves, and the public ones we share, with equanimity and compassion?  Can we choose to see these stories as constructions of experience, as opposed to arbitrary truths?  Perhaps it’s time to inventory our stories, and throw out the ones that don’t serve us.  The ones that create conceit and the ones that hone in on limitations. 

While we are at it, maybe we discard the stories we have about other people:  She’s OCD.  He’s a jerk.  The cat is lazy.  That way, we act as Story Eunuchs for others.   What might happen if we remove these judgments?  What possibilities appear?               

  

Bill Ayers, Katherine Boo, and Me

In yoga teacher training, we talk about dharma, as in “What is your dharma?”  Dharma, loosely translated, means one’s path, or true nature.  One of the questions on the final exam asks, “Is your dharma clear to you?”  For me, the answer to this question is no.  My dharma is maddeningly opaque.  But I recently encountered two people whose dharma is beautifully transparent. 

Bill Ayers is a teacher and writer who has been a social justice advocate since the 1960’s when he first started teaching kindergarten.  His activism has brought him trouble at different times, most recently in 2008 when conservatives excoriated President Obama’s relationship with him (they were both active in Chicago politics).   Fox News discovered he was the keynote speaker for last weekend’s Association of Teacher Educators conference in Atlanta, and there was a brief sizzle about how teacher educators were inviting a known terrorist to speak.  Luckily, the ATE leadership did not bow to this pressure.  Seeing Bill Ayers speak, in person, was a profound and moving experience. 

He talked about seeing the unseen people of the world, because “every human being is of incalculable value.”  He spoke about the differences between teaching the arts of liberty—initiative, courage, imagination, listening, speaking--versus obedience and conformity.  He was earnest and honest about the intellectual and ethical challenges of teaching, and said that it was up to us to change the dialogue that has blamed teachers for the problems of student learning borne out of poverty, inequity, and racism. 

He also said, “Privilege blinds us and anesthetizes us” and insisted that whatever rich kids get in school, all kids should get.  Smaller class sizes, libraries, field trips, discovery learning.  He clearly understood the pressures teachers experience in the face of scripted curricula and few resources.  Ayers said that his son, a high school teacher, told him that he was 70% an agent of the state and 30% a free agent. Ayers urged us to find the nooks and crannies in order to do what is right for our students within that 30%. 

These messages about making the invisible visible and the blindness that comes with privilege reminded me of the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by reporter Katherine Boo.  She spent over three years collecting and documenting the experiences of residents of Annawadi, a slum adjacent to the Mumbai, India airport.  In a matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental tone, she describes the harshness, the corruption, and the stench through the eyes of several different residents.  Abdul is a garbage sorter who collects recyclables from his fellow residents who scavenge trash from outside the airport.  Asha is a wife and mother who uses the corrupt system to gain power and money for her family’s well-being.  Fatima is a woman born with one leg who changes their world forever when she sets herself on fire in protest and rage against the unfairness she experiences.  Boo humanizes these individuals by providing their perspectives on survival in a place that only wants to get rid of them in order to attract Westerners and others with money. 

Bill Ayers and Katherine Boo are not afraid to look at the results of dehumanizing poverty and inequity.  They do not let us turn our heads from the individual and collective anguish inflicted on the voiceless—poor students of color and slumdwellers.  They also don’t victimize them by claiming what Shoshana Felman calls “passive empathy,” which further oppresses the unseen by removing their power.  Instead, Ayers and Boo view the strengths and choices of their subjects with respect for the individual and the context.  One Annawadi resident says, “Rich people fight about stupid things.  Why shouldn’t poor people do the same?”

I am no Bill Ayers or Katherine Boo.  Neither, probably, are you.  However, we can still bear witness to the social, economic, cultural, racial, and sexual inequities of the world, and vow to see the unseen, not with pity or contempt, but with the knowledge that “every human being is of incalculable value.”  Ayers ended his talk with a quote from the Mary Oliver poem, “Instructions for Living a Life:”

Pay Attention.

Be Astonished.

Do Something.

Sure, that’s a bit opaque for one’s dharma, but I’ll take it.