Twice in the last week I've heard those words, "It's in you." The first time was at the Hospice training when Rachel Naomi Remen's talked about service. One of her arguments was that serving others was an innately human desire, we learn early on in our lives that we are connected to others, that what we do affects others, and that we share feelings with others. Our desire to serve stems from this idea of connectedness, this instinct to stand beside another. One of the other points Remen made was that we all have stories to tell, that our stories make us who we are.
Today, I heard a gerontology colleague/friend, Anne Basting, interviewed on NPR. I've mentioned Anne's work on storytelling before. Her project, Timeslips, encourages creative storytelling among people with dementia. She argues that rather than be frustrated by memory loss we should focus on the creative energies that may still be present in a person. When talking about using her storytelling approach, she points out that no special training is needed because "It's in you."
We all are storytellers and it is that storytelling that creates in us an ability to see beyond, to reach past, to connect. It's in you.
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