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Tell the story of your day
Taking a cue from Laurie Anderson’s parents
I just read in an excellent and endearing article about Laurie Anderson that her life’s work has always revolved around storytelling and “the word,” whether written, spoken, or sung. I learned that at dinner hour, Laurie and each of her seven siblings around the table was required to “tell the story of their day.”
That got me thinking. Not only about how fortunate Laurie Anderson was to have such parents, but also the gift of boundaries that such a seemingly simple directive offers.
Tell the story of your day. It’s an invitation to the brain to sort, to look for patterns, to find a silver lining, a theme, a message, a take-away, or even just an emotion, a color, a tenor, a tone. We know the brain does this automatically (thank God). And it condenses the story to a span of 24 hours.
What does it mean to tell the story of your day? The second we call it a story, it becomes more than a simple recitation of the day’s events. It’s about the sifting and sorting, deciding which details to include, which events, which emotions. It’s not about completeness or totality. The orator is not required, or even invited, to include all aspects of their day. Only what they noticed. Only what resonated.
