Story of Us

We are all part of multiple “us’s” – families, faiths, cultures, communities, organizations, and nations in which we participate with others. What community, organization, movement, culture, nation, or other constituency do you consider yourself to be part of, connected with? With whom do you share a common past? With whom do you share a common future? Do you participate in this community as a result of “fate”, “choice” or both? How like or unlike the experience of others do you believe your own experience to be? One way we establish an “us” – a shared identity – is through telling of shared stories, stories through which we can articulate the values we share, as well as the particularities that make us an “us.” Your challenge will be to define an “us” upon whom you will call to join you in action motivated by shared values, values you bring alive through story telling. However you define the “us” whom you hope to move, it must consist of real people with whom you can communicate, move or not move, engage or not engage, get to act or not.

Here at Harvard there are many potential “us’s” among your classmates, as there are in any community. They may come to think of themselves as an “us” based on enrolling in this class, enrolling in the same year, enrolling in the same program, sharing similar aspirations, sharing similar backgrounds (work experience, religion, generation, ethnicity, culture, nationality, family status, etc.), sharing similar experiences coming to school here, sharing similar values commitments, similar career aspirations, etc. Your challenge will be to think through the “us” whom you hope to move to join you in acting together on behalf of a shared calling.

Some of the “us’s” you could invite your classmates to join are larger “us’s” in which you may already participate. You may be active in the environmental movement, for example, and may find others among your classmates who are as well. You may be active in a faith community, a human rights organization, a political campaign, a support organization, an immigrant association, a labor union, and alumni group, etc. Some “us’s” have been around for literally thousands of years, such as the stories that define most faith traditions – some only for a few days. Most “us’s” that have been around for a while have stories about how their founding, the challenges faced by the founders, how they overcame them, who joined with them, and what this teaches us about the values of the organization. They also usually have tales of critical crises that were faced, like the American Civil War, for example, about which Abraham Lincoln told such a powerful story in his Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address.

So you may want to invite your classmates to join you in a larger “us” already working together or you may want to engage them in articulating a new “us” based on experiences that you are sharing now. In fact, you probably already have numerous stories of us that communicate what it means to be a “midcareer”, for example, based on events that took place during the summer program. Remember, like all stories, a story of us is built from a challenge, the choice made in response to that challenge, and the moral taught by the outcome.

How would you define the “us” whom you hope to call upon to join you in your public narrative? Please describe it in a single sentence if you can.

NEXT: Story of Now