The single story

In the TED talk The Danger of a Single Story, Chimamanda Adichie discusses the idea that when we have a single frame of reference about a culture or country we define them by it.  An example that she uses is the single story of Africa and how it shapes our preconceived ideas about those who live there, no matter what country they come from.  When I first heard this idea, I was captivated by it.  I began thinking of all the places where I have held a single story and how that has shaped my interactions.  Then I realized that it also applies to individuals as well.  You see we often define the people we know by a single story.  In doing so we often have a hard time seeing them as anymore than that story. This is the main reason why first impressions are considered so important.  Once that impression is made, your story is now set for that person and even your best efforts and intentions may prove futile in the face of it.  I know the truth of this from both having it done to me and having done it to others.  There is a deep tragedy in this, however.  By limiting people in our eyes, we miss out on the beauty they have to offer the world.  They become definable objects that fit nicely into a box rather than being the images of God that they were created to be.

Certainly one of the greatest dangers in this is that we can define people by a single bad experience with them or by a single character flaw.  There is a scene in Lord of the Rings where Faramir, Frodo, and Sam are talking.  Faramir is detaining the two from their mission and Sam is forcefully arguing that those who claim to oppose the enemy should not halt them in their progress.  Faramir looks at one of the men, now dead, who was on their way to attack Gondor and asks if he was truly evil at heart.  It's a poignant moment in the film.  Faramir realizes that there is more to each person than a single story.  Unfortunately, I've done this many times with others.  If I have a sharp disagreement with someone, I am often tempted to define them by this.   Or if they don't agree with my particular political viewpoints or they've made moral choices that I don't agree with, they become that issue. This leads to hatred, anger, racism, and oppression.  Yet I fear this is not the greatest danger that comes from this problem.

I think the more subtle danger to this is far more destructive.  When others begin to see you as a single story, you do the same to yourself.  You project only that which you want others to see you as.  By doing so, you begin to live into a single story.  In my own life, I like when people see me as being adventurous.  And so that is the story of my life that I let people see.  Now certainly I have spent a lot of time doing adventurous activities and extreme sports, but that leaves out a great deal of who I am and what makes me, me.  When we allow ourselves to be defined in this way we become something less than what God created us to be, we become diminished.  It affects everything about us.  We become constrained by this new identity and are unable to become anything more than that.  We begin to give up on the dreams that God himself inscribed on our hearts.

When thinking of the single story, I think about the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.  The pharisees and crowds have identified her by her adultery.  They strip her of any other identity and She embodies adultery to them and nothing more.  The woman herself seems almost resigned to her fate.  She has accepted the single story of herself.  She knows the punishment and waits for the sentence to be carried out.  Then Jesus does something miraculous.  He turns the situation on its head.  Jesus withholds condemnation from her and tells her to sin no more.  He restores her dignity and gives her a chance to rise above the story that she has lived into.  By giving her back her identity as a child of God, she is able to live a more beautiful and grand story. We must learn to do the same.  May we see beyond our own single story that has been defined by others and instead recapture the image of God we were meant to reflect to others.  May we begin to notice the beauty that lies in each person that we meet and resist the urge to define them by a lone character trait or by a single interaction with them.  I want to leave you with this C.S. Lewis quote from The Weight of Glory.  I think it sums up well the incredible nature that humans possess and the nonchalance that we seem to pay it.

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship it, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. ... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - These are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors”

We are invited to so much more.  May we live out grand complicated stories and encourage others to do the same.