DELIBERATELY DIVERSE | by Mitch Drummond
Deliberately Diverse represents the individual thoughts and opinions of a group of Taylor friends who almost never completely agree about anything, but are gratified by the opportunity to stimulate deliberberatly diverse discussions.
Today’s column represents the thoughts and opinions of Mitch Drummond, NOT the Taylor Press.
Just imagine for a moment, there is no past, no future. There is only this moment — now — the future is just after this next period. What about the last 65 years, what was that? We could call it history, or we can call it a story, pieces of past instances stored for the future. That idea could be very freeing, except some of these stories can negatively impact our lives in the present. The traumas in our stories continue to haunt us and affect us today, if we let them.
Stories are as old as humanity and are universal to all cultures. Our myths, legends and histories, personal and shared, are what we use to create our sense of self and to make sense of our confusing world and the parts we play. Everything we experience or participate in is stored as a story. We conceive of ourselves in and through our stories.
We have stories about our lives and why we are the way we are. These are our stories, our family members, friends, acquaintances and the individuals we pass on the street, all play a small part in our stories, while we play the lead.
Living together we create shared histories and stories that define us as a community and pass these on to our children.
Some of them are positive, some negative. Not all members of our community remember these stories the same. One story that impacts us in Taylor, took place east of Granger when more than 150 family farms and three communities were uprooted in the late ’70s to make way for Laneport Lake, aka Granger Lake.
For those families and the surrounding communities, this was a traumatic and life-changing event. On the other hand, Granger Lake now provides all of the drinking water in Taylor and other surrounding areas, downstream flood control and recreation. There are many stories surrounding this event, and all of them are true for the people who lived them.
Those stories, good and bad, are now part of our shared history.
Everyone around us has their stories in which we may also play a part; those are their stories.
Sometimes their stories contradict our stories of the same shared event.
We experience these moments differently and create alternate stories as they affect us individually. Many times we create stories about acquaintances or family, some not very flattering.
These are our stories. We judge, argue and battle over conflicting stories because we are so caught up in our own storyline, we can’t begin to understand a story with a different perspective.
We all save and relive those stories, some are joyful, some are painful.
We can choose to own any or all of them. These stories define us as an individual, a community or a nation. We should use our stories wisely and share them gently.
