Finding Your Why

When I was a freshman in high school I was tasked with writing a short story and orally sharing it with my literature class. There were no limits on what we could write about, so I decided to be unconventional about it. Veterans Day was that week so I decided to tell a story about an old war veteran dying in a hospital; you know, light stuff for a 3rd period class.

To get the class more interested in the topic when I came up to the front I asked them to take a moment, close their eyes and think of someone they knew who was a veteran, or if they didn’t know any veterans, to think of an older person they cared for.

I then laid down on the floor with a pillow under my head and invited all my classmates to do the same as I jumped into the imagined story of a man who could only look at the drab tiled ceiling in his room on the 8th floor.

Sometimes the world needs to be turned upside down for us to learn something new.

The next day I had a friend come up to me over lunch and tell me they appreciated my story, and it had inspired her to call her veteran uncle who was ill and in hospice care. She said they ended up talking for about three hours that night, more than they had spoken in several years prior.

“Anyway...I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch, but I wanted you to know your story did some good.” she said tearing up a little as she walked back to her table.

I found out later her uncle had told her at the end of the call that he loved her and was proud of her—something he had never said to her before.

He died two months later, and it ended up being the last meaningful conversation they shared.

I ended up with a B+ for that project, but I would have taken an F on every project that semester if every story I told had been a tenth as impactful.

This is what happens when we find a thing to bring into the world. When we tell a good story with the moments of our lives we enrich the people around us. Whether we are showcasing our passion or offering up that which we care for so others can interact with it, we are making strides toward renewing the world. (We’ll get to that idea another day soon.)

After that project, I entirely changed how I wrote and told stories. I wanted what came out of me to give Life to people. Not just be something adding to the white noise of living, but to do what I could to turn people on their heads and give them a new way of looking at the world.

It turns out the best way to live a good story is to have a reason for doing so. To have a why. Which means we have to go take a look at our pasts before we can step into our future.