Glacier National Park, MT

“An inspiring piece of content made by anyone can connect and move mountains and enact real change. This was not possible at this scale ten years ago.”

I think it was Hanson who said this during the first half of Saturday. I think of all the individual stories of individual people throughout the ages that could have inspired more hearts. I think about the story of Caine and his arcade. Thank goodness that struggling filmmaker came along and recognized the magnificence that was before him.

I think also of Inocente, a homeless teenager who caught the eye of filmmakers through her colorful art contradicting her reality at every stroke.

I think of the poor four-year-old boy who was injected with heroine and from his tragedy rose a community of giving for Safe Place, a local temporary home for children in the foster system. These are individuals with stories that were captured and distributed and resulted in waves of positive impact even beyond themselves.

All of these, but the last one especially, makes me wonder. In “Storyteller Uprising,” Hanson notes, “in the most primordial way, we humans have been conditioned to pay attention to stories that help us make sense of our own lives, to which we can relate both individually, and in a collective way.” Yet, none of the above stories represent a situation I can relate to, nor, do I believe, can many of those people who went out of their way to support these individuals. How do we learn about ourselves through these people, or this baby? But yet, we all feel something.

It must be more than life experience. It must be deep within ourselves that we see these people struggling to hold onto the beauty of their life. We all do that in some small way. Still thinking on this one…

On Saturday, we discussed the potential motive and benefit the filmmaker of “Caine’s Arcade” may have had when he came back to ask the father if he could tell Caine’s story. I wonder does this motive take away from the authenticity of the impact, does it better the overall outcome, or does it even matter? In Inocente’s case, the film won an Academy Award, obviously no small feat for the creators. Personally, I do not believe a piece of content made with the wrong intentions, no matter the story, can be as inspiring or impactful as one made with the right ones.

If you listen to the same radio I do, you’ll realize I’ve heard these stories on KIRO 97.3 FM. I’ve been listening to KIRO consistently for a year, and they are excellent story curators and creators. But it wasn’t until today, that I heard what they were saying differently and understood the potential impact of their work. You might think, well this is a major news source here in the Northwest, of course they have great impact. Sure, that is true. But Inocente’s impact did not come from their coverage and the outpouring of support for Safe Place came from a story given to them by a listener.