October 3, 2015

Stories are Cities

Jordy Brown is a writer and teacher. He graduated from UNI this past year, and is currently student teaching in Dubai. He presented his poem Stories Are Cities at a TEDx event last spring, and it's one of the best extended metaphors you will hear. For a quick summary, he talks about how we build cities in our minds. It's huge analogy. Each city consists of skyscrapers of knowledge, and streets and cars. Some cities have walls and some have bridges. Tears are the rain in these cities, but they clean the streets. It's a brilliant connection between individual people, and the cities that make up our brains.

And then the poem takes a more serious turn, and Jordy explains how our mental cities connect. As people, we share our skyscrapers of knowledge and our values and rules that govern our minds. But roads, stories, are how you really connect two cities, two minds.

I think Jordy is telling us to connect over stories. You won't fully appreciate someone else until you've heard about their experiences, and you can connect theirs to your own. These connections are important because fight against the connections that cause two cities to turn and attack another city. Stories forge connections, avoiding "... giant mushroom clouds of insults, slurs and hate...". I think Jordy's message is ultimately a positive one. Stories are what connect us, and the way to avoid issues between people is to start asking to hear each other's stories. Tell your story, listen to the stories of others. Break down the walls the safeguard cities, and build bridges instead.

Jordy's poem is something more people need to hear and realize. In a world full of judgement and angry opinions, we need to begin to listen to each other and appreciate each other's experiences and differences. "No city is the same..." 

Stay awesome,
Claire

Check out Jordy's poem here!
To read about Jordy's student teaching adventures in Dubai, check out his blog

His blog also ties to his poem as Jordy learns about the values of people from different countries and cultures. He's also student teaching 4th graders, and even the young minds he's coaching are teaching him.

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