A Taste of Cinnamon in the Everyday Porridge

This is just a quick and rough collection of beginnings of stories.

Stories, that happened in real life. Maybe long time ago, maybe just a week or maybe a still on-going story. Stories can be hidden… quite far away in the smallest darkest and most locked up place in the heart. But no matter how hard one tries it is impossible to forget them, impossible to cut them out of one’s life, impossible to be oneself without the stories which happened.

Because this would you be a decal of the real Me or You or someone. So, if it is not possible to delete this stories out of our life, what else could be done with them ?

 They could always stay in the smallest darkest and most locked up place in the heart. It is a possiblility. It is an possiblity for living a quite nice quiet and normal life.

And that would be it. Mostly in everyday life it is possible not to think about this hidden space in the heart. But when there is once silence from the rush, when there is a little time of nothing going on, when this leads to a tiny time for reflection- the hidden stories risk to come up. And they might come up making one feel worried, wanting to cry and creating a itchy stinging feeling in the stomach. They can be swallowed down and then one goes back in the rush… But next time they might want to go out again and this time it might get even worse. And there might be other stories which were also sent to the smallest darkest and most locked-up place in the heart between the swallowing down and the coming up.

Those hidden stories are locked up against their will and that’s why they will protest and at some point get rebellious against oneself.

But couldn’t there be more then just a possibility? In life there are opportunities as well. And why not choosing the opportunity?

Because it got forgotten in the rush of the everyday life that there is a key to the hidden stories. A key which opens the lock to make them free.

The keykeeper is the storyteller. Yes, it sounds a bit to easy. The hidden stories can be freed if they are just told ? Why we don’t do that all then all the time?

Because one is afraid to be laughed at, tob e despised, to be looked at in a strange way. One is afraid to be hurt… and maybe to hurt others too.

Also, listening, just giving attention, just taking some time to have an open ear for what the other persons says… got kind of forgotten in the world of today.

So that is why it is not so easy. But something not being easy doesn’t mean that it is impossible.

Maybe deciding to use the key which everybody already has all the time ist he hardest part. Because if one finds the courage to put the key into the lock of the smallest, darkest and most locked-up place in the heart and free the hidden story…there might be a surprise.

One frees the story…one tells it…maybe just whispering, maybe stopping and reflecting after every second phrase… maybe just whimpering it with the face covered with tears… And then looks to the listeners. Looks into eyes wide opened, some just staring, some blinking, some even crying.

But there is no laughter, no pointing at oneself, no commenting judgement- there is just silence.

And when the story is completely free, when finally even the end of the story slipped out of the storyteller’s mouth…there is no going back to what was done before, no going back to rush and everyday life.

Instead, there are hugs. There are consolating and congratulating words. There is understanding and a feeling of connection. And this because one did not take the way of the possibility but of the opportunity.

Of course, one can never ever have a perfectly cleaned up und tidy smallest darkest and most-locked-up place of the heart… but just freeing some of the imprisoned stories one by one step by step makes the heart a little brighter and lighter.

Telling a story can bring a little taste of cinnamon in the everyday porridge.

 

The story about the story: I write this story about my feelings about a Youth Exchange in Cluj-Napoca about Storytelling in May. As you see, it took me quite a while to find some time in my everyday life to write about it. And this was the right time now. I did not want to write a classical report about what we did on every day. If you are interested in that you can ask me further questions.

Because if I had written a classical report you would know what we did. That’s quite nice and interesting. But you would not know what it did with us, with us as persons and with us as a group. Even in this little story it is incredibly hard to describe the power of stories, how bonding and healing they can be.

Honestly, I think there are no words for that.

If you want to know more about the project you can just contact me. There will also be more information about it in some little movies and reports and a brochure of all the stories too. As soon as some of this projects are ready, I’ll post the link there.

Thank you for time for reading this story and I hope I could encourage you to become a storyteller from time to time. It is a good way to add flavour to the everyday porridge. Doesn’t have to be cinnamon. I just think that fits well to porridge. By the way, « everyday porridge » is a surely not correct translation from the German word « Alltagsbrei » which describes being stuck in always the same rhythm of everyday life. I don’t know any word in English that would fit in the same way.

But maybe there is an English word that describes this feeling too (or a word in another language) I would be very interested to know it!