Why Stories Matter Most

Stories express the why of our existence.

Our stories express our reasons for living. I think our why or our core motivations, are expressed in stories, not in facts or data points. I think that makes us uncomfortable. We can never hope to understand the stuff that really matters if we don’t embrace discomfort and try to engage with people’s stories.

I’m going to start with something obvious.

In our regular life, we know that people are not their LinkedIn bio, right? We know that facts don’t make a person. Facts don’t make a life. For example: My LinkedIn bio says some pretty (I think) interesting things about me. I’m about to defend a PhD. I work as a CX Strategist. I co-founded a new venture at a big Canadian bank, a venture designed to help ageing Canadians combat loneliness and social isolation in retirement. Before getting a corporate job, I did PhD fieldwork in Mumbai, where I studied slum activists fighting for water and sanitation. Before my PhD I did masters work in the non-profit sector and the anti-human trafficking space. The TL;DR is something like Anelynda: Strategist. Humanitarian. Academic. Co-founder.

But you know that’s not really me, right? Because I don’t write other truths, like how it is extremely depressing to study suffering (like human trafficking and life in slums and all…