Stories: a gentle way to change the world

Entertainment can be a very serious matter, argues communications specialist Juan Narbona.

A few months ago, I was invited to a university to participate in a round table discussion with a sociologist and a philosopher. Each of us had 30 minutes to speak. About 100 young students attended the talk. The sociologist began speaking, and although he said some very interesting things, within 10 minutes he had managed to get everyone’s heads down, either because they had fallen asleep or because they were absorbed in their phone screens. We had completely lost them…!

After the sociologist, the philosopher spoke. I confess that I had more difficulty following what he said, but I also remember some interesting ideas. But heads remained bowed. Finally, it was my turn, and out of pure academic pride, I set out to regain the students’ attention. So I went to the lectern and said, “What I want to tell you can be explained well with a story.” At that moment, 50% of the heads lifted.

But social media was still hijacking half of the students, and I wanted everyone’s attention.

My intention was to talk to them about the need for a stable environment in which to mature, so I told the story of Ulysses’ return to Ithaca: “When Ulysses arrived in Ithaca after 20 years lost at sea, everyone mistook him for a ragged vagabond; not even the beautiful Penelope, his wife, was able to recognise him…”

At that moment, 100% of the faces were looking at me. Well, they weren’t looking at me, but rather their imaginations were in Ulysses’ palace, there in Ithaca. They were looking at me without looking at me.

As some may recall, in that scene Penelope – angry at those who ate and drank at her husband’s expense while he was away but bound by the conventions of Greek hospitality – reluctantly orders the supposed vagabond to take her own marital bed and go to sleep outside. Odysseus replies: “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t move it. For I built it myself from an olive tree that grew here, and one of the bed’s legs is rooted in the ground.”

It was a detail that only the two of them knew, as it was their marital bed, their most intimate place. Once the secret was revealed, Penelope’s eyes opened wide; she recognised her husband and, filled with tears, she melted into his embrace.

The Odyssey recounts it thus: “The faithful wife embraced Ulysses with the same force with which shipwrecked sailors desire land; she looked at him with great desire and did not remove her white arms from his neck…” I can assure you that the atmosphere in that classroom was electric: and it wasn’t a TikTok video, but a story that is almost 3,000 years old! Of course, it was not my doing, but that of Homer himself, author of the Odyssey.

The Power of Stories

That day, I seriously considered the question I am posing to you today: why did those young people raise their heads? What is the power of stories? What is it about anecdotes that makes them stick in our memory, move us, and help us understand things in a particular light?

Thanks to stories, we can quieten a crying child or entertain a bored student; we can convince a customer to buy an item, persuade voters to support a candidate, or inspire someone to give themselves to God or return to him.

That’s right: a story can change a life.

The Church has been telling them since the beginning: Jesus told parables beautifully. Perhaps today, at a time in history when so many people no longer understand the language of faith, we need to rediscover and make greater use of the wonderful potential of stories. Recent examples, such as the series The Chosen, show there is an enormous thirst for profound stories in society.

Entertainment is serious!

At a university, we observe reality and try to analyse it deeply. In my faculty of communication, where we want to train the future spokespersons of the Church, we often talk about topics such as fake news, artificial intelligence, reputation, public opinion, crisis management… and similar topics that condition public opinion. However, sometimes we overlook more ordinary tools or topics that have impressive power. One of these is stories.

Sometimes we dismiss stories simply because we associate them with entertainment, but entertainment is a very serious matter (which is why, paradoxically, it has to be fun in order to work). Perhaps some people dismiss stories because they cannot use fancy words to tell them, those paroloni – as they say in Italian – those big words which we like so much in the academic world, words such as hermeneutics, paradigm or propaedeutic. With stories, you have to be simple, otherwise people will not understand you. Stories, I repeat, are a very serious matter.

So, let us ask ourselves again: What is the power of stories? Where does their strength lie? What is their magic formula? To answer these questions, I will give three answers, and I will provide an example for each one.

The rabbi and the lobster

The first reason for the power which stories exert over us is that, as Aristotle said, “it is in our nature to imitate. Imitation is innate in man from childhood, which is why men are distinguished from animals” (Aristotle, Poetics, I,4,5–10).

Stories imitate reality, but they do not commit us to it. They are therefore like a training ground for us.

Our imitative nature is comfortable with stories. We want to know how the protagonist resolves a conflict because, in some way, we have also experienced or will experience a similar problem. This short video illustrates this idea very well.

Play

In it a rabbi uses the example of a lobster to explain why to grow we have to come out of our comfort zone, to feel uncomfortable.

Perhaps at first you were surprised to see a rabbi talking about lobsters. That’s normal, as it’s not very common. But little by little, we became interested in what is happening to the poor animal. Only at the end did we discover that we were actually the lobster. That its conflict was ours, because so often we have shied away from change, difficulty and effort. The final lesson is clear: let us imitate the lobster, which accepts the pain of transformation. “It is in our nature to imitate…”

The girl and the peach

The second reason for the power of stories is physiological: stories are effective because our brains are designed to process them. Not many years ago, a group of researchers at the University of Parma discovered what are called mirror neurons.

If there are any neurologists reading this, I apologise for the simplification, but I will try to explain what this consists of. In short, they have discovered that when someone tells us something, the part of the brain that is activated in the narrator is the same as in the listener. If the story is happy, both brains develop the same activity to process that happiness; if it is sad, the same thing happens.

In other words, the empathy that arises from emotions has a neurological basis. Our brain is made for compassion, for sharing emotions with others. This advert will allow us to examine this idea. It is an advert that has been the subject of much discussion in Italy. It was produced by a supermarket chain called Esselunga.

It is a simple story: a little girl, whose parents are separated, is out shopping with her mother in a supermarket. She takes a peach to give to the separated father, saying it came from ‘mamma’, mum (i.e. his wife), and this leads him to reconsider the separation. And that’s it.

One might ask: why would a supermarket that sells oranges, lettuce and cucumbers – and of course, pears – spend a fortune telling a story of suffering and reconciliation? The answer is one word: connection.

The supermarket connects with our fear, with our fragility, and tells us: I know that when you come to shop, you are not just a customer, I know you are a person. With your wounds, your problems, your family conflicts. Who doesn’t have them?

Thus, with a story, it manages to connect with us emotionally. And the next time an Italian goes shopping and hesitates between Carrefour and Esselunga, they will remember that they once felt understood by one of the two. This type of advertising, which seeks emotional connection, is becoming increasingly widespread.

The blind beggar

 The final reason for the power of stories is that they give us meaning in life. They explain realities to us, or address questions or concerns that we carry within us but are unable to answer on our own.

A story is like a light that turns on and illuminates a truth that was there but we couldn’t see it.

Let’s look at a brief example.

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In this video, we see a blind man begging very unsuccessfully. But then a young woman changes the message on his card and it leads to him getting a lot of money.

I always say that the woman who corrected the poster studied communication at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. A story like this makes us understand that we have to help others not because they are in difficulty, but because we have been very blessed. We understand that somehow being happy, enjoying normal life, must have consequences.

Lives of saints

So let’s make better use of stories. In the realm of faith alone, the possibilities are enormous. In our churches there are many images (like art or stained-glass windows) which tell stories young people might well be unaware of. For us, they are an opportunity to explain the beauty of faith to them.

The lives of the saints are another source of inspiration we should make better use of. For those who follow a particular path in the Church, it is very important to reread the life of the founder or foundress, because in that story – in those anecdotes from their lives – God speaks to us. In those accounts lies the seed of something which will bear much fruit over time.

In some countries, the lives of the local martyrs can also help to understand the value of our faith. This ‘return to the beginnings’ is especially important when going through moments of confusion or discouragement. These are stories that bring new life to those who read them.

Family stories

Each of us has stories to share. I imagine many of you are married: how important it is for your children or grandchildren to know the story of the day you met your spouse or the time you spent as boyfriend and girlfriend and the thousand and one adventures you have accumulated during your lives. Your memories can nourish the dreams of those who will take over.

I will conclude with a quote from Pope Francis that sums up well what we have said here: “We need stories that bring to light the truth of who we are, even in the ignored heroism of everyday life. By immersing ourselves in these stories, we can find heroic motivations to face life’s challenges.”

This is a slightly edited translation of an article which was first given as a lecture and then appeared on Juan Narbona’s website, Communicazione Onlife. For the original article, see here. It is published in Adamah Media with the author’s permission. For some other Adamah Media articles about stories, see here, here and here.

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