We are hardwired for story

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. -James A. Barrie

As this recent podcast interview about Life is a Verb reveals, I get a fair number of emails the thrust of which is this: "But I don’t have stories like yours to tell. I’ve never been anywhere. I don’t serve as the muse for Billy Collins’ most powerful poetry and I don’t vacation in the south of France with Johnny Depp (and that twig waif he calls a partner) like you do."

We are each of us living an extraordinary story.

These recent essays by readers should be the only proof you need of that. There is a tenet in improv that says, "put down your clever and pick up your ordinary." We are our very most powerful–and potent–at our most ordinary. Let’s put down our need to be clever or craft stories that will impress others, and pick up–as these readers have done in their gorgeous essays–what is left at the end, just us.

Let us recognize, as Jerome Bruner has so brilliantly written, that we are hardwired for story. What is your story?

I hope you’ll enjoy the podcast. In it you’ll also find the story of the art in the book.

I’m off to find a voice coach.

Or not. Maybe my ordinary voice is enough.

So is yours, my friend. So is yours.