What’s your story?

Humans are sto­ry­tellers. Since long before we as a species began to set­tle into pas­toral life, we’ve told sto­ries. Not just through spo­ken words, but through art as well. We know that our pre-agrar­i­an ances­tors were already pass­ing along sto­ries through lan­guage, paint­ing, sculp­ture, and music — as long as 60,000 years ago. 

What is it about sto­ries that we find so compelling? 

Jesus taught his spir­i­tu­al lessons through sto­ries or para­bles. Einstein arrived at his ground­break­ing the­o­ries through sto­ries — what he called “thought exper­i­ments.” Van Gogh paint­ed sto­ries. Michelangelo sculpt­ed them. Musicians tell their sto­ries through lyrics and melodies. 

Close your eyes and imag­ine our ancient fore­bears, sit­ting around the fire on a chilly fall evening. By the flick­er­ing flames, they’re shar­ing sto­ries of suc­cess­ful hunts, of bat­tles won and lost, of encoun­ters with nature. Like us, they used sto­ries to make sense of their world. From paint­ings on cave walls to carved totems to those camp­fire sto­ries — sto­ries helped them orga­nize their life and explain why things hap­pen the way they do. 

A Wikipedia arti­cle main­tains that mod­ern sto­ry­telling “has extend­ed itself to rep­re­sent­ing his­to­ry, per­son­al nar­ra­tive, polit­i­cal com­men­tary and evolv­ing cul­tur­al norms. Contemporary sto­ry­telling is also wide­ly used to address edu­ca­tion­al objectives.” 

That’s a pret­ty good descrip­tion of what we are doing at WinCity. I con­sid­er every­thing we do here to be a form of sto­ry­telling. Wes Moody’s pho­tog­ra­phy, Adra Fisher’s paint­ings, Erin Skinner Smith’s con­tem­pla­tive explo­rations, Chuck Witt’s fic­tion, Bernard Fraley’s poet­ry, Jim Trimble’s per­son­al reflec­tions, Harry Enoch’s his­to­ry lessons, Jeff Brandt’s and Ron Kibbey’s explo­rations of music and film, all of the opin­ion pieces that sev­er­al of us do. And more. 

The one thing that ties all of our work togeth­er is that we’re all telling our sto­ries, the sto­ries of our com­mu­ni­ty, the sto­ries of our rela­tion­ships, our places, peo­ple, and our shared history. 

As we approach our one-year anniver­sary, we’ve tak­en a hard look at who we are, what we do, and where we’re head­ed. We’re refo­cus­ing on our strengths and let­ting go of things we aren’t well-equipped to do. In the com­ing weeks and months, we’ll be talk­ing a lot about sto­ries, because we all have them, and we all relate to them. 

So, what’s your story?