Stanton & Stories

"We all love stories. We’re born from them. Stories are who we are. We all want affirmations that our lives have meaning. And nothing has a greater affirmation than when we connect through stories. It can cross the barriers of time – past, present and future – and allows us to experience the similarities between ourselves and through others, real and imagined."

Andrew Stanton: The Clues to a Great Story

One of the things that has struck me most in the past month have been stories. Stories of living here 20, 50, 100 years ago. On walks to Max Coffee or church on Sundays or to Iki, I try and imagine these stories -- wondering if I was walking these streets that long ago what I would have been thinking and seeing and feeling. I try and piece together the little known before and the little learned since -- about World War I & II and the Soviet occupation and the people who stood for their independence and freedom and what it all means to be one who lives in Klaipeda or Lithuania or greater Eastern Europe since. 

These stories are so recent, so fresh. Those who defended and supported both sides of the conflict still live. There are those with grandparents who were deported - some who lived to return and continue living in their homeland. There are those who worked for the KGB headquarters still living in Vilnius.

I think to 1991, which happens to be year I was born. That year, 1991, marks the time in which Soviet power fell in Lithuania. That's only 22 years ago. 

Stories surround us everywhere we go - and I love Stanton's quote, written above. It's spoken to me before, but take a quote out of one context, put it in another, and it claims a different meaning. Stanton says a story "can cross the barriers of time -- past, present, and future -- and allows us to experience the similarities between ourselves and through others, real and imagined." 

Through the stories being told, I am crossing the barrier of time and experiencing a small look into the lives of others. These stories I'm hearing are opening up new doors. Changing perspective, maybe in small ways, but ways all the same. Shifting a worldview. More similarities are being seen and show me that when it comes down to it, we're all just people. And I don't mean this in a way that belittles our differences or doesn't celebrate individuality and uniqueness. It's more said in awe and appreciation, if that makes sense.