Storied Thinking; Legacy Takes Time #43 #cong24 #legacy

Reading Time in Minutes

4

1. Be mindful of the stories you carry
2. Let us look at the national story and see what we can learn
3. Change the way you think about time
4. Let stories be in service to your legacy

Clare’s performances include ancient myth, folklore, quantum physics, history and modern stories in productions that tour worldwide.
Her latest show, The Spanking Goddess and Other Discard Tales is based on the forgotten stories of wild women in history, and is currently touring.
Requested to speak at Embassies, Universities and international gatherings, her speeches spark wonder while giving practical tips that enhance teams and work cultures.
Her trainings have been delivered to limbless veterans, firefighters, NASA scientists, schoolchildren, NHS workers, Forest School leaders and the All-Blacks, as she swiftly injects resilience and curiosity into each environment.
She also runs Salons connecting arts, medicine, sport, education, climate activists and parents in a collaborative inquiry space.
Clare’s work is centered around using Story to re-humanize humans for almost 20 years.

You can contact Clare by email or find her @storyclare

By Clare Murphy 

Stories are built to last. Some last 500 years, and some have lasted as long as 60,000 years. That is a particularly potent kind of legacy. When a myth gets made it is built of strong material; archetypes, symbols, dramatic events. It is forged in the fire of the one who tells it, with each telling it becomes stronger. It lives in the hearts and minds of its’ listeners, gaining power with each year. Until it doesn’t. Until a new army invades, or a new religion takes over. Myths go underground then, carried in the hearts of the brave until they can resurface years or centuries later. We are all of us living inside of mythological time, though it is easy to forget that.

It is easy to become lost in the moment, the latest crisis, the next drama unfolding for humanity. Especially now when everything feels so fraught with danger. It can be hard to imagine a living future, a thriving humanity. As a storyteller I am trained in stories that have lived for thousands of years. Stories that have been distilled in thousands of human bodies, and passed from mouth to ear.

The distillation of wisdom teaches a certain amount about legacy, change and patterns. Often the same motifs get repeated in stories, wisdoms that return again and again. Those who seek to build up only their own house fail, whereas those who seek to build the next generation into one that is wise and kind often succeed. Speed and quick fixes rarely lead to long term solutions. Wealth for wealth’s sake never creates happiness.

“Societies grow great when old people plant trees under the shade of which they will never sit”

Greek Proverb

Myths invite us into a larger landscape, and also allows us to think mythologically about our present day predicament. Ireland still lives in the shade of the myths planted by colonialism, capitalism and the Roman Catholic Church. Although politically free for 100 years, we Irish have inherited behaviours from our multiple masters of church and foreign state. Until we address the inherited legacy it may prove difficult to create a new positive legacy for those that come after us.

What will our national legacy be? Will it be one of self-interest, individualisation? Do we have the capacity for a truly gigantic leap in our thinking? Could we move out of an inherited paradigm into creating a legacy that serves all humans, plants, animals and the biosphere?

The stories say that we can change. But it depends on which stories we read, which we repeat and which we carry. If we want to, we can change the narrative. If we change the narrative we can change the legacy and make one worth leaving behind.

Working with story is a quick and effective way to build vision and empathy. Stories trigger the brain of the listener to brim up with neurochemicals that activate empathy. They create a kind of emotional intelligence that allows the listener to wrestle with their own thoughts, develop their own understandings, while being part of a greater community of listeners.

In most societies listening to a story was a community wide event. Certainly this was the case in Ireland, it also was the case in Mesopotamia. In second millenium BCE the Mesopotamians listened to the Enuma Elish at times of great change in order to achieve catharsis. It was believed that we needed to listen to myth, to watch the gods go through their ordeals so that we could fathom how we might get through our ordeals. Mythological thinking allows for thinking across deep time, long stretches of time that encompasses many many generations. In a world of quick fixes that often exacerbate the problem, this kind of storied thinking is needed.

To know what comes next, to understand what legacy we want, we have to be willing to look back behind us and remember how we ended up here. Then we can find the required tools, technologies and thinking that can allow for a different future than the apocalyptic one that is predicted.