Even simple ideas can be life-changing
Impactful personal stories often come from a simple idea or recommendation
Too often people assume that a personal story worth telling must come from a major event in their life — something dramatic, or traumatic. And while such events do, in fact, teach us valuable life lessons, random ideas or suggestions that don’t seem to be a big deal at the time can also be life-changing; a spark setting off a chain reaction.
For example, a story about the love of your life begins with the simple decision to go out on a date. Or a suggestion from a friend or mentor turns out to be the catalyst to choosing a career. The reality of life is that something unexpected is often waiting to happen. We don’t see it coming, yet it has the potential to change everything. And it’s only in hindsight that we come to realize how important that random decision was.
Such was the story told by Peter Aguero on The Moth Mainstage. It’s a masterful bit of storytelling that’s worth studying from the standpoint of story composition, but it serves as inspiration to consider pivotal moments in your life that could become the starting point of an impactful story worth sharing.
Peter’s opening is a great example of narrative transportation. He doesn’t just say he’s in a bad state of mind. Instead, we see him on his living room floor — mental imagery — while he shares a dose of inner dialogue as a way to create emotional engagement. To be sure, his word choice is unconventional, but we’ve all been there, so we connect by way of our shared humanity.
So I'm sitting, laying face down on my living room floor, and the carpet is rough against my cheeks and all I want to do is just burrow underneath the carpet. I want to hide. I want to dig in a hole. I want to get my body, my soul, my everything underneath, to hide, to get away from everything.
Peter then gives us the backstory. That he's trying to write a new show. But his work has typically focused on the pain of my past. He’s tired of it... and didn't want to do it anymore. And that's when his wife makes a suggestion. A small idea, or so it seems.
Peter, you need to take a pottery class.
And when he asks, Why a pottery class?, she replies:
I think it would be gentle and I think it might feel like a hug.
A beautiful and poetic simile that sounds odd at first, but also feels exactly right. And we already know that Peter could benefit from something that feels like a hug.
And so the journey begins. But as with so many of our journeys, it starts from a place of reluctance: I kind of dismissed it. Yet his wife is insisting, so Peters searches to find a pottery class, finds one in Long Island City, calls them, and books a private session.
We’re transported into the ceramics studio as he describes: There are walls packed with shelves and things. There are tennis balls next to WD40, next to cornstarch, next to yard sticks, next to bundles of sticks, random buttons, all kinds of weird, just strange things. Once again, inviting us into the scene. Whenever crafting a personal story, visualize the settings you enter. What details can you share that allow the audience to see what you saw?
This woman comes up to me and she's wearing mismatched six shades of pink somehow. And two different colored socks and sandals. It's October. She looks like she's been happily cutting her own hair for the last 50 years.
From the opening pair of sentences we realize the woman is eclectic, but rather than finishing with a simple statement about her hair being a mess, he offers us a line that invites us to wonder what happily cutting her own hair for the last 50 years looks like. He leaves it up each of us to create or own visual.
Peter shifts his attention to the guy chuckling in the corner: if the Queensboro bridge had a troll, it would be this guy. He could have just said that the guy looked like a troll living under a bridge, but this is New York, so he makes the description hyper-local, playing to the local audience. When you use metaphorical comparisons to describe people, you need to decide how broad or narrow your figurative language should be.
Least we get too wrapped up in this new world, Peter offers a callback to his opening lines, and we’re reminded that he’s still broken. And the second rule is today we’re just going to have fun. And I tell him, I’m not so sure I remember how that even feels.
Describing how something sounds, especially a person’s voice, can be challenging. How would you explain the sound you hear as Peter describes his teacher’s voice?
…he’s got this voice, it sounds like if you drizzled honey over some soft summer thunder
When I heard that line I thought, “That was beautifully said, but I have no idea what the heck it means.” Similes usually refer to something an audience can relate to, but that doesn’t have to be the case. You can give them a hint, lead them in a direction, then let them figure it out on their own.
The next section of his story gets into the process of working with clay. Peter’s prose is sparse, yet we’re sitting there with him as his body figures out how to interact with the clay. There are many more examples of masterful storytelling in Peter’s narrative, but I’ll leave it to you to listen, discover, savor, and embody how he brings us along for the ride. If you listen to this story 3 or 4 times, you’ll uncover new meaning each time.
In the end, Peter shares the lesson that resulted from his wife’s simple suggestion. It’s personal to him, of course, and yet feels universal. To come from a calm place, to take action, and to appreciate what happens. Then repeat. A metaphor for life, and living.
And I take a breath and I make a move and the shape changes.
And now back to you…
Was there a sentence or phrase that resonated with you? Leave a comment below. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts. And did this story about how one simple idea became a springboard for personal transformation remind you of an event from your life?
And since these articles are fueled by copious amounts of java, you can always…
Peter told a beautiful, personal story and you outlined it in a beautiful way. You described the vignettes and when Peter arrived there I would smile and nod.