From Dallas to Japan: The Story Spiral Goes Global
By Faye Lane
I went to Japan with a dream.
I came home knowing it can work.
On August 15, more than 20 people gathered at the Toyama City International Exchange Center for the first international Story Spiral. We came from different countries and cultures. Some of us spoke different first languages. Most of us were strangers.
And then we began telling stories.
Within hours, we weren't strangers anymore.
That is the magic I hoped for when Story Spirals began at Thanks-Giving Square in Dallas: ordinary people sitting together in a circle, sharing true personal stories, listening deeply and discovering the humanity we have in common.
But I'll admit something. Before Toyama, I wondered: Would it translate? Could something that worked in Dallas work halfway around the world?
The answer was a resounding yes.
The details are different. The stories are the same.
Our first theme, as it always is, was gratitude.
One by one, people began to share. Stories of mothers. Friendship. Loss. Hope. Fear. Joy. Longing. Belonging.
The cultural details were wonderfully different, but the emotions underneath them were astonishingly familiar.
That was perhaps the greatest gift Japan gave me: a deeper understanding that, at the heart level, people really are remarkably alike. We live in different places. We speak different languages. We inherit different customs and beliefs. But we love. We grieve. We hope. We struggle. We want to belong. We want to be seen.
The stories are the same. The details are different.
And when we give one another our full attention, something beautiful happens.
Japan made me think a great deal about paying attention.
I experienced a traditional tea ceremony and an incense ceremony, both characterized by extraordinary care and mindfulness. It occurred to me that storytelling is also an act of attention. A storyteller pays attention to life, searching for the meaning hidden inside ordinary moments. A listener pays attention to another human being.
And we blossom under each other's care and attention.
To be truly seen and heard, without judgment or expectation, is an immeasurable gift. And Story Spirals reminds us that the gift moves in both directions. The teller gives and receives. The listener gives and receives.
Something happened in that room
Our Story Spiral was scheduled to end at 2 p.m.
Nobody wanted to stop.
The group unanimously decided to keep going until 4, when we finally had to give up the room. Everyone who wanted to tell a story got to tell one. I watched friendships form before my eyes. People arrived as strangers and left as a community.
And then came another moment that meant everything to me.
At the end of the gathering, I gave our microphone, which serves as our Story Spiral talking stick, to my wonderful co-presenter from Toyama Book Bridge. Along with it, I left the Story Spiral format.
The circle will continue without me.
That is the vision.
I don't want to travel around the world simply conducting Story Spirals. I want to help communities create their own Story Spirals: self-sustaining circles where people can gather safely and respectfully, without feedback or cross-talk, simply to share and listen.
Eventually, I envision those circles connecting with one another.
Dallas connected to Toyama. Toyama connected to Dublin. Australia. India. Guatemala. Peru. France. And wherever the spiral carries us next.
Imagine having friends around the world whose politics you may not know, whose religion may differ from yours, whose culture may be unfamiliar to you — but whose stories you know.
That is my dream: a global community of friends interconnected at the heart, sharing stories, ideas, resources and experiences across cultural, religious, political and socioeconomic differences.
And it began at Thanks-Giving Square
Everywhere I take Story Spirals, I will tell the story of where this began for me.
When I was 19 years old, I discovered Thanks-Giving Square at a time when I felt lost and alone. Here was a place devoted to gratitude, to building bridges, to connecting human beings across our real and imagined differences.
Decades later, those ideas became part of the DNA of Story Spirals.
Toyama showed me that what began in Dallas can travel.
Thanks-Giving Square talks about moving from common ground to higher ground. In Japan, I saw what that can look like in its simplest human form: a circle of people who didn't know one another, choosing to listen.
And then choosing to stay.
The spiral has gone global.
And we've only just begun.
Faye Lane is Artist-in-Residence and Chief Inspiration Officer at The Thanks-Giving Foundation.