You Are What You Read

I finished my first tutoring session of the year a few days ago and decided to take a stroll across central park to the east side subway. A couple blocks from the train, I found a branch of the New York Public Library. I hadn't been in this one before, so I decided to take a peek. I didn't need any books, I just thought I'd see what kind of things were lying around for future reference.

I really should know some things about myself by now. Like the fact that walking into a library is dangerous. You know the people who can't walk into a bookstore without spending money? Imagine sending them into a bookstore where everything is free.

This picture is of the pile I brought back with me, stuffed in with the two standardized test textbooks I was hauling already. I'm going to need some specialized shoulder exercises if I insist on "just seeing what's lying around" a library on a regular basis.

I grew up on a steady diet of fiction. Mostly what is known as the "Hero's Journey" to story pros. I wrote it up on Backstage as the following: "main character is at home, gets called out onto a quest, refuses, gets dragged out anyway, overcomes trials, conquers evil, saves world, comes home a better character." Sound familiar?

Well I'm still reading a couple good novels along those lines, but as you can see from my pile here, I've strayed into a big set of nonfiction books, mostly on Behavioral Economics, Social Business, and Story Construction. In other words, I've gotten really interested in what actually makes people tick, how you can do something that both makes money and makes a difference, and how stories operate. All of these are very much related.

That along with the TED talks I've recently been watching has gotten me thinking about what kind of things determine our thoughts and actions day-to-day. Because it's election season and an election year, one of the things that this really seems to impact is how people are going to vote. I used to think that Republicans and Democrats identified as such because the values they believe in. Now I'm starting to think that they identify as such because of the facts they believe in. They are much more likely to disagree on facts rather than what's important to them. But that's a huge topic that would be better addressed somewhere else. More important to me is how people generally learn facts and how those facts go on to shape their life.

Here's one of the basic, but interesting things I've learned: people remember stories far more readily than facts in isolation. Seems simple and intuitive enough. But it has special implications for someone like me who pays rent by teaching.

Storytelling at its core is a lot like joke-telling. you have your set up (banana peel on the floor, some jerk you don't like walking merrily towards it, his mind more occupied with how pleased he is about doing something you don't like) and then either your expected payoff (jerk steps on banana peel and bites it) or unexpected surprise and payoff (jerk hops peel, only to cross the path of a gorilla looking for more bananas who smacks the jerk in the face). We remember things with this construction. Especially if they're funny or have an emotional impact. The dry theory is interesting. The example teaches you something.

So if you want to shape the things you spend your life thinking about, talking about, and doing something about, try shaping the stories you take in. I feel like this is one of those things that's obvious to anyone thinking about it, but that few people actually follow that train of thought. You know the phrase "You are what you eat?" Maybe the more accurate one is "You are what you read."

So, what kind of stories are you going to seek out?