Heroes Not Zombies

A few days ago I was in Copenhagen and visited the Glyptoteket. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better presentation of sculpture. It’s a beautiful building with a winter garden in an inner courtyard and it has a permanent exhibition of the most astonishing, gorgeous marble sculptures. Like most museums, it puts on temporary exhibitions, and while I was there, they had one called “The Road to Palmyra”. It is astonishing!

This is new ground for me. I don’t know much at all about that part of the world, or about its history and culture. I was quite blown away by room after room. It still amazes me to read about great cities of the past which have either disappeared, or shrunk down to a tiny fraction of their size in their heyday. Palmyra is one of those cities. At one time it was a meeting place of cultures and peoples, with all kinds of beliefs, values and artistic preferences. That’s all long gone. One of the world’s great cities invaded and destroyed, never to recover. (In fact, you’re probably aware of the destruction of parts of the city by ISIS fighters in recent years. Yet another blow to a once great culture). I still can’t get my head around the fact that today’s great cities might one day be forgotten. That doesn’t seem possible, but history tells us it’s not only possible, it’s pretty inevitable.

I could write a lot about this museum but I wanted to share this one photo with you. I took it in a room dedicated to how the people of Palmyra remembered their dead. Around the walls, each in his or her own little cubby hole, there is a bust or a carving representing someone who died. My first thought was, how wonderful to be able to look at these likenesses, to be able to see the faces of these people who once lived on this planet. How much more is added to the commemoration of their lives by these sculptures? I’m used to seeing gravestones with simple inscriptions – the person’s name, their dates of birth and death, maybe their age at death, and maybe, just sometimes a reference to their work, or their position in a family. But imagine seeing their likeness too? I know in some traditions, a photograph of the loved one is framed and fitted to the gravestone, and that, too, is probably powerful. But, I was left feeling……something is missing.

Yes, it’s great to see these sculptures and you can see how different they all appeared from each other. But I realised what I really wanted, and what I couldn’t get (in the vast majority of cases) were their stories.

I love the unique stories that we have to tell each other. I’ve said this before, but I really did look forward to each Monday of my working week because I knew someone would walk into my consulting room and tell me a story I’d never heard in my life before. Of course, that didn’t just happen on Mondays, and it didn’t just happen occasionally, it happened again and again, every day of my working life.

My life has been filled with stories. I delight in them. I am moved by them. I am amazed by them. I am honoured to have had the opportunities to listen to so many of them. How else could I get to know a person? How else could I get to understand a person? How else could I help a person to cope, perhaps to heal, and even to grow?

What else do we have to give each other in this world?

How wonderful to be able to tell our unique and personal stories. To share them with each other. To enable each other to tell them.

How poor would my life have been without these stories?

I feel that’s more important now than ever. We are in danger of replacing stories with data, of replacing stories with labels. Data which de-humanises us and replaces our stories with algorithms. Labels which de-humanise us and which are used to demonise “the other”.

Our personal stories connect us. I’ve always found I feel more compassion and empathy for the people I get to know and understand when I hear their stories. Stories help us make sense of people, of ourselves, and of our world.

Here’s my intention for 2020 – to tell my story, to share it with others, and to savour the opportunities to hear the stories of others.