Musings on Ganley's White Paper

In Barbara Ganley’s White Paper the main topic of the relationship between storytelling and communities is explored in a variety of examples. One part which particularly stood out to me was where she writes, “In this hurry-up era, stories are both more natural and more difficult to wrest from the blur of life…It takes slowing people down enough to listen” (24), which stands out because of just how applicable it is in my own post-grad life. Now that I am no longer in an academic/school environment 24/7, I find the rapid pace of “real life” to be nonstop.

How many times while in the company of others does one find his or herself at a loss for words trying to keep the other person’s attention? Or even the opposite, where one struggles to pay attention to a story being told? It is my sincere and firm belief that our brains have been hardwired to run quicker than our attention spans. More and more children each year are being diagnosed with ADHD, but what if this is just because the pace of societal interactions does not allow us to focus on one thing at a time? In my daily interactions I frequently struggle to concentrate on the task at hand. Without my internal clock and dialogue slowing me down to take each step one at a time, I find that I and those around me try to do too much at once.

Storytelling in today’s world works in much the same way, with people either frequently interrupting one another’s’ stories or being unable to pay attention and recount all that has been said. Taking the time to be invested in stories is a skill, where before it was an expected trait. So much is continually happening (technology only contributes to this fast pace) which in turn causes our attention spans to be incapable of investment in any one given happening.

I ask my friends what is new in their lives because I do genuinely care and want to hear the latest story they have to share. Yet more often than not it seems that the frequent response is that nothing is new. This too stems from our incapability to focus on one thing. How can we be expected to “wrest from the blur of life” any one story of what is new? Ganley’s article makes it clear that our societal task needs to trend back towards community and storytelling for a common purpose. But first we need to commit to our individual storytelling abilities.