Lately, I've been thinking about "legacy". What is the legacy we leave behind for the future? So here's a REPRINT of a tip from May/2016 that I believe has some relevance.

This week's tip comes from colleague and Irish teller Yvonne Healy. Yvonne did a workshop on Family stories and I found one exercise particularly interesting and exciting. I believe it has many uses!

Quite often, people don't believe that they have done anything worth "telling" about. They feel their lives are "ordinary" vs. extraordinary. This exercise in a group, or with a person you are interviewing can put a whole new perspective on that concept. And... it forces the teller to use their creativity!

Interview a family member and have them tell you something they did. It could be something simple that they feel may not be very "interesting", but have them tell it anyway.

OR - in a group, partner up and have your partner tell you something they did that seemed extremely mundane, like putting away the dishes, or dusting the shelves.

The next step is to project yourself 5000 years into the future. What would the world be like? Now tell the story back to the family member (or partner) but tell it as a GREAT MYTH. How did that one thing that they did affect the world in the future? How might they be remembered in the folklore of the future?

A long, long, long time ago, Mary dusted the shelves in her house, and did a particularly good job. So good, in fact, that when her friend Jane came over, she noticed the excellent job Mary had done. She was also so pleased that there was no dust in the house as Jane had such bad allergies. Jane told so many people about Mary dusting the shelves and how wonderful it was, that they all decided to follow suit and do the same in their own houses. They even took it a step further and cleaned and scrubbed everything. Each time someone visited a home, they marveled at the cleanliness and vowed to clean their own homes and office spaces with great energy and pride. This spread far and wide, across the country and eventually, around the world. And that is why the earth is such a clean place today, in the year 7016!

There is great creativity in this exercise for the teller, finding a way to frame the story in a different way (and time). And there is great power in having that person hear their tale as a Great Legend, or Myth of the future!