Storytelling Makes You Just Like Family
I flew into Chicago on a stormy day in December 2016 to perform for the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District holiday party. I was supposed to catch a connecting flight to the Champaign airport, but a snowstorm had canceled the flight. Karl, the CEO, picked me up at the airport. It was about a two-hour drive through cornfields from Chicago to Champaign.
When Karl picked me up, he informed me that he had just left his family’s holiday party, which was a short drive from the airport. He needed to return to pick up his wife and kids before we all headed to Champaign together.
“Would you mind coming in for a few minutes?” he asked. “The family sort of knows who you are. They’d like to meet you.”
I agreed, of course.
I was greeted by a raucous group of partygoers who knew more about me than I had expected. It felt as if they had spent the entire day watching my YouTube channel. They hugged me like a long-lost friend. Clapped me on the back like a neighborhood pal. It was sweet.
This is a truth about storytelling: You develop an inverse relationship with your audience. The more you tell, the better the audience knows you, particularly given the nature of the stories we tell. It’s common for me to meet someone who knows a great deal of my personal history while I don’t know the person’s first name.
It also means that you can find yourself celebrating Christmas with a family in Illinois, who welcome you in like one of their own, while you struggle to keep track of who is who.