A thread to hold onto

I’m not sure if it’s my turn to post or not, but I’m leaving the country before dawn tomorrow for three weeks, so I figured I’d better get my thoughts out there while I still have Internet access.

We’re reaaaally getting into the thick of things with this week’s prompt. I often wonder how we as human beings, with all of our different memories, life experiences, opinions, personal narratives and brain chemicals can understand one another at all, can reconcile our divergent lives and perceptions-- maybe we never really do.

Are we anything more than a manifestation of our experiences, a collection of stories reflected in a receptacle of nerves, bones and flesh?

Even standing two feet to one side can skew someone’s perspective; how do larger concepts like race, sex, financial status, success and happiness alter and shape our worldview, our self-image, and our view of others? The last several readings have described how rhetoric fits into this tangled web—this is where it really seems to click for me (although I’m not sure if I can explain it well).

Rhetoric (I believe, and the recent articles seem to corroborate) is, in a way, how we reconcile our personal "human experience," how we explain and account for the divergence between our unique and often vastly dissimilar perspectives. “Rhetoric is the entwinement” of different planes of existence as the prompt says—I like that notion. It gives us a common thread to hang onto in this outrageously perplexing and multifarious state of existence.

The reason I’ll be gone for the upcoming three weeks is because I’ll be traveling to Zawiya Ahansal, a remote village in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco to teach English and French to young school children and mountain guides. In the time leading up to this trip, I’ve researched and read deeply and extensively about Moroccan history and culture; specifically, material relating to the indigenous Amazigh (Berber) tribe who are the primary inhabitants of the rural and mountainous regions.

Like virtually any culture, the Amazigh emphasize storytelling—but unlike other cultures who have become industrialized, technologized and modernized, they still rely heavily on storytelling. The language of the Amazigh, Tamazight, is an oral language, rarely transcribed and quickly disappearing. For the Amazigh, stories are the heart of life; they entertain, they help pass down history, they help keep families together, they help designate identity and solve problems. Families and friends often spend hours telling stories by candlelight into the waning hours of the night, both truthful and fantastical stories. But although these cultural narratives help shape Amazigh identity, they remain silenced and untold. And if these stories disappear forever, a large part of the Amazigh culture will disappear with them.

I would say that we are all, to a certain extent, a product of narratives, of stories. Stories we tell ourselves (if you identify as a timely person, you’re more likely to be on time; if you identify as shy then you’ll be less likely to feel comfortable interacting with others); stories others tell us culturally and on an interpersonal basis (these stories come from race, class, stereotypes).

Some stories we are born into and others we create.