In my online workshop on telling personal stories, we devote a whole class to folk tales. You might be asking, “What do folk tales have to do with personal stories?”
Folk tales taught me the structure of stories. The classic plots, themes, messages occur over and over again in the folk tales and are reworked over and over again in personal stories … or even novels, movies, and television. Hamlet gets told as The Lion King. Cinderella’s rags to riches gets retold in Pretty Woman and countless biographies. Cautionary tales like Little Red Riding Hood get repeated in urban legends: “Beware of Strangers.”
Not Just Entertainment
I used to think of folk tales as children’s stories and pure entertainment. However, as I began to learn to tell folk tales, I found that what captivated me was the way that they are still relevant today. The themes are universal. I can see these themes repeat in my own personal stories. In fact, folk tales have helped me to write some of my personal stories.
Choosing Folk Tales
I enjoy telling eclectic folk tales from other parts of the world. They often have a different cultural view of the world. They allow me to look really closely at what I believe and how it might be similar to (or different from) other cultures.
I reviewed my repertoire of folk tales and chose one for the online class.
As I ended the folk tale, there was a momentary pause. The students sat with the emotions and the meaning of the story. This particular story examined the question: What is justice?
“I didn’t think it should end that way,” said one student.
“What do you mean?” I said.
She explained her view of justice, how this did not align, and how the story should have had a different ending.
I shrugged my shoulders and said defensively, “I didn’t write the story.”
As she took a breath to speak again, I recognized that folk tales do not have an author but started long ago in the oral tradition and continue to survive because they are still relevant somehow to today.
I took my own breath and let go the need to defend the story.
Today, many people think that you should be able to edit any story to fit your view of the world. Social media has trained us: If I don’t like it, then I shouldn’t see it. We do not want to be challenged. We do not want our world view to be challenged.
“The fact that the story has you thinking means that it was a successful story. It comes from a different culture. It creates the seed for conversation,” I replied.
I could see her slowly soaking in this comment as she began to re-frame the purpose of stories in our lives. As the instructor, I recognized how powerful folk tales (and all stories) can be to stimulate conversation and understanding of other cultures even when we do not agree.
“So how do you think it should have ended?” I now asked curiously.
I had no need to take the comment personally. I did not feel the need to change the story. The story had started a conversation. We do not need to agree, but we can understand each other’s point of view.
Storytelling creates a world that is safe to enter into and experience without the high-stakes consequence of our own lives. If the hero loses an arm, we do not lose an arm, but through empathy we can experience what that might be like. The frame of story allows us to think deeply about how we view the world, how our choices might be different, and how our life stories might end differently. All stories, even folk tales, allow deep introspection, empathy, and understanding of others.