Stories that take hold: Ben Goldsmith's episode

By Sandy Glanfield

I’m writing this as I am preparing a session on story telling for this week’s inaugural Reboot Forum. In a world full of ‘content’, I’m thinking about what makes a good story - like the stories that get into our hearts and our bones, the ones that endure. And more than that, the ones that create a shift. Or to riff off Ben Goldsmith’s words, the stories that change or psyche.

What do we need see, hear and feel for something to take root in us? To plant the seed inside us that we can’t ignore. The one we feel growing that can flip flop us between excitement and nerves, the one that we turn over and over in our heads and is on the tip of our tongue in conversations with friends.

My sense is that it’s not one story, but the way stories live and through us. For Ben, it was living out what he was reading and watching, and then exploring in his own world. Testing his ideas through practical activities in nature, or writing to a magazine or a park ranger to test the possibilities of his vision. Then seeing and experiencing the world he’d imagined thriving in the South of France only fortified his convictions.

But the question rattling me the most is, if it’s not one powerful story or technique, how do we give other people's stories, and their still-forming ideas, the same patience and air time I'd want for my own?

I don’t have any answers yet, but I have the seed, it’s turning over and over in my head with questions, and it’s almost on the tip of my tongue to discuss with my group on Thursday. But just maybe that’s where we recognise the power of the story… it’s ability to take hold…