This Story Isn't Over!

About twelve years ago, I was looking ahead to turning sixty, not exactly with dread, but with something darn close to it. 

I was feeling depressed, as if there was nothing much left to look forward to once I hit that milestone. We live in a youth-obsessed culture, and I came of age in the 1960s, when being over sixty meant you were standing in the way of the new, the good and the beautiful. That view of aging had become a reality-shaping story for me, without my realizing it. 

While feeling sorry for myself, I saw that storyteller Gareth Higgins was leading retreats to Northern Ireland that July. Having met Gareth through mimetic theory circles, I knew him as a peacebuilder, movie reviewer, and a founder of the Wild Goose Festival. I didn’t know him well, but I somehow felt that I needed to go on his retreat. 

The first few nights, we stayed in old stone cottages by the sea. Gareth gathered the fifteen of us in a small room in one of the cottages with a fire in the fireplace (though it was summer, the night was cool) and he told us a story.

I don’t remember everything he said that night, but I do know the story ended with him being kissed by a stranger on a romantic Paris evening under the Eiffel Tower—nothing he ever guessed would happen! After each "act" of the story, he repeated the same phrase: 

“You never know how a story is going to end,
especially when you’re in it.” 

Well, that had me in tears. What made me think I knew how my story was going to end? The idea that my life would be over at 60 was itself only a story I had been telling myself!

The story Gareth gave me on that first night of the retreat changed everything. It freed me to tell a new story, of years to come filled with unforeseeable wonder and unexpected surprises. Suddenly, life was fun again!

Since that night in July 2014, I have experienced things I never could have imagined. I became a grandmother 10 months later; talk about injecting joy and wonder into one’s life! Keith and I now have 7 grandchildren and, as Glinda sings in Wicked, I couldn’t be happier!

In 2018, I attended a conference of peacebuilders in Nairobi that changed the trajectory of my life’s work. (We didn’t leave Kenya without going on Safari!) I started and wound down one foundation (unRival), and forged a partnership for Raven that is still evolving in ways I cannot foresee. Gareth, too, has become a dear friend, as has his husband, Brian.

That one night of story helped me welcome mystery back into my life. Like Gareth’s magical kiss, I could never have anticipated that old stone cottage on the coast of the North Sea, sitting with a group of strangers and listening to the very words I needed to turn my life around.

Mystery and story are always shaping both our present and our future, whether we realize it or not. Something as simple, mysterious, and even apparently frivolous as a story has the power to create a future of peace or one rife with violence. It pushes the limits of reason, but that doesn’t make it any less real. 

But the power of story is not always obvious. It tends to hide beneath what we take for granted as “just the way things are.” It’s not that there isn’t a factual basis to reality, but because story hides behind the facts, we forget that facts don’t carry meaning in and of themselves. They require interpretation. Thus it’s truer to say that “reality” is the result of a story we often do not realize we are telling, interpreting the facts and shaping our reality, often without our conscious consent.

Conflict transformation involves learning to interpret facts in a way that restores our agency.

Pondering this paradox—the power of story which Gareth taught me, and the hiddenness of the stories that drive our lives—helped me realize that I had other stories I wasn’t finished telling.

My book, The Wicked Truth: When Good People Do Bad Things, came out nearly 20 years ago. And yet, the ideas which compelled me to write the book feel more relevant today than they did back then. What’s more, I feel I’m not done thinking through those questions, and just how much they’ve changed my life. Again, I could never have anticipated that I would be returning to something I wrote so long ago, yet that story has made very clear that it’s not done being told!

One of the great and unexpected proofs that this second edition is the right choice is just how much fun I’m having with the process! For one thing, I get to work with a fabulous editor, writing coach, and fellow fan of mimetic theory, Lyle Enright. Lyle is a great sounding board for updates to the original manuscript, and especially for the new component we are adding: a study guide inspired by our work with global peacebuilders through unRival.

Writing the study guide is challenging me once again to explain why the story of Wicked, and why story in general, is so important to the pursuit of peace with justice. And I do enjoy the challenge! It’s a challenge faced by everyone who is helping communities work through conflict: how to help those communities tell a different story about who is to blame for the past, and what it will take to create a more peaceful future.

In other words, a certain kind of story got them here, and a different kind of story can get them out. Exploring these dynamics is a great reason to re-immerse myself (or have an excuse to remain immersed!) in the myth-busting music of Wicked!

The idea that’s guiding me as I write the study guide for The Wicked Truth is this: We can choose the future we “story into being” (as Gareth might say).

But stories don’t write themselves, and they are rarely the work of a single author. As you work through this study guide, my hope is that the story you are telling in your own life will come into focus. You’ll discover the impact it is having on your life, who your co-authors are, and whether that story is supporting the future you want to see for yourself, your community, and the world. 

If not, you will be freed up to choose one that does. 

To learn more about our special guests, you can listen to Jim & Sally, Dr. David Hooker, and Gena St. David (coming soon!) on the Wicked Truth Podcast, Third Things First!