Why do we need new stories, anyway? Aren’t there enough stories being told these days? Hasn’t every story been told before? And, if so, why should we each feel motivated to tell, share, or explore our own?
In this solo podcast, your host Dave Ursillo hits pause on the last 7 months of interviewing amazing guests to share his own story with you, our dear listeners.
Dave opens up to share how he stumbled into the art of storytelling as a practice of self-knowledge (and connecting with others); why poignant criticism of stories, expectations, and ideas today is so important, the ways in which the tools in our pockets are overwhelming the human species, and consider an offering on why being your story’s teller feels more important than ever, today.
We hope you enjoy this special, slightly different episode! Email us anytime at Hello@TheNewStory.is to share your feedback, or just to say hello.
Visit us at TheNewStory.is to learn about The New Story Company or to listen to our full catalog of interviews.
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Episode Transcript
We provide full episode transcripts for increased accessibility, especially for those who may be hard of hearing or for whom English is a second language. Please note that transcripts are not fully edited and may contain errors. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Dave Ursillo 00:00
Imagine a young man sitting outside by himself cross legged in a bed of mocha colored mulch and around him is a garden. lush greens, it’s a late spring day, in a month among all of the green leaves and the new growth are little explosions of color. Imagine like a burnt red and burnt orange day lilies. Imagine pink and white cotton candy colored flowers. Behind him is an almost peach colored brick wall of a garage to his childhood home. And he’s sitting there cross legged writing with a pen in his hand, a leather bound journal, he is writing.
Dave Ursillo 01:07
And over the course of maybe minutes, but what feels like hours. He writes, as much as he can recall, as much as he can remember. He’s seeking he is storing memories and trying to understand who he really is. The memories that he’s drawing from are everything from his childhood, his upbringing, the forces that he senses have, have made him who he knows himself to be. He thinks about himself as a part of a generation.
Dave Ursillo 01:52
In this case, Generation Y, or what would come to be known more today as the millennial generation. He thinks about his parents, his family, his ancestry, being of Europeans, specifically Irish and Italian descent, a fourth generation American, of immigrants across all four of his grandparents and great grandparents descent. He’s thinking about major events in life that have shaped how he sees the world specific specifically events like September 11 2001, when he was 15 years old, and was watching the mass destruction not in person, but from his high school libraries, grainy rabbit eared television set live as the towers fell. And when the internet stopped working, and thought that the world as he knew it might be coming to an end. This young man, I’m sure you could probably guess by now, it’s actually not a guest that we’re having on our show today. It’s it’s me.
Dave Ursillo 03:11
From The New Story Company, this is The New Story Is a podcast that explores the stories, perceptions and ideas that have come to shape the world today as we know it. Along the way, we speak to talented guests who are championing the new stories that may shape our collective future for the good. I’m Dave Ursillo.
Dave Ursillo 03:33
This is the image that I have this is the story that I recall that I would call my introduction to story and to the autobiographical self as a construct long before I had the language or understanding. Long before I understood what I was doing it this was not a conscious impulse. This was a this was an act of desperation, me sitting alone in a garden, at my childhood house where I was living at the time at the age of 23. With my parents, somewhere in the house behind me, and I was sitting there retreating to nature as I oftentimes did, and still do with a pen and with paper and putting pen to paper accessing a part of myself that I only really knew how to access in that act of writing, of giving voice to a quiet, sometimes silenced. Part of self that felt true. And over the course of like I said, minutes, hours, days and weeks during this pivotal time in my life of my early 20s A period known by developmental psychology So the study of human growth and development to be instrumental for really understanding oneself and one’s self identity for perhaps the first time in young adulthood, or what is sometimes called later adolescence in developmental terms. I was desperate to know who I was.
Dave Ursillo 05:23
And the only way that I could try to figure out who I was, having just left, a very early but promising career path behind i, the year before, was an intern at the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the summer of 2008. I had a job interview in the West Wing of the White House, which, of course, I did not get to being extraordinarily under qualified, but just honored and happy to be there. And to have a cool experience of sitting in the lower level of the West Wing and talking to some very impressive people. I had moved back to Rhode Island amidst the turmoil of the Great Recession, which started in the summer of 2008. And transitioned and into 2009. And took a job with a state office holder who I was told would be the favorite in a gubernatorial race, about 18 months later to run for governor and probably become governor and have eyes on maybe Washington DC in the years after that. And I left that job, and I left that career path, because really, it’s all that I’d ever known. From a very young age, I was subjected to so many incredible privileges and upbringing that I failed to really understand for a very long time was so privileged, socio economically, not to mention the privileged identities that I hold, being a white male, someone who gender identifies as a man was born biologically male, who is cisgendered, who is heterosexual, who has no disabilities. came from a good family, a loving family, suffered very little wanted for nothing, had a very accomplished white collar father, small business owner and attorney, a mother, who was exceptional at raising children. So loving and kind and a great cook had so much and part of my privileges, along with my my siblings, were educational privileges, and going to private school my entire life, a college preparatory school, near where I live now.
Dave Ursillo 07:45
And being a college preparatory school, the idea being the I, your eyes were always fixed on the goal of getting into college. But it wasn’t just getting into college. It was also getting through college, excelling in college, and excelling in career from every moment thereafter. And I don’t say that, to say that I experienced any pressure to be anything to become anything in my career is quite the opposite. There are stories from my father about his parents giving him two choices of what he could choose to be in his career, a doctor or an attorney. For reasons that I won’t get into right now, he chose attorney and he thus became one but I feel very sincerely that my father, in his experience of being a parent wanted to undo that pet that karma of his parents giving him basically an ultimatum. And my father with with me with my younger sister, my younger brother, told us as a whole generation of parents, who had a similar socio economic and privileged experience, I think, in the United States and in Western nations, akin to ours. So sent to their kids to Generation Y, or the millennial generation, you can be whatever you want to be there is no ceiling, there is no limit and why wouldn’t we think so? Growing up in the late 80s, early 90s into the mid 90s, this golden age of the American economy, American hegemony, the downfall of the Soviet Union. Democracy had won capitalism had won. America had won after a 60 ish year Cold War, the threat of nuclear destruction every day. And over the course of some days, weeks and years, feeling extremely tense, and like the United States wouldn’t win in this standoff against the Soviet Union to nuclear powers. One mistake from one person at one moment in time could have spelled the literal destruction of the entire world and human civilization as we know it. And so here we were in the 90s.
Dave Ursillo 10:18
Being of all those different privileges, being in an exceptional moment in history, where it felt like there was no ceiling. And we were, as some political scientists call it at the time at the end of history, that we reached the end goal. And so there’s me. And maybe there’s you if you are of a similar age, to me. Putting your sights on every in any possibility of what you could do in your career in a society in which career is held as the utmost expression of self in so many ways. By the time that I graduated college, I had finally found myself on a career path of politics and public service, that mildly traumatic experience that I had in watching 911. And feeling the fallout as I did, it was a life changing experience at the age of 15. It activated me politically, socially and globally in mind. It antagonized antagonized a lot of defensive aggressive reactions to feeling under threat. By which I mean as a young man, I identified very conservatively very hawkish Lee being, I believe, so unaware of my many privileges in life, and still believing in the great myths and misconceptions around what it is to be American. The expression the stories of total equality, connected to the presumption that total equality necessarily exists because it has been so said.
Dave Ursillo 12:14
And so I found myself on this career path of leadership of public service of seeking politics and government and life and career in government, as an outlet that I thought would be one of meaning and purpose. That would fulfill the promise that I had, essentially, made by nature of agreeing with my educational privileges and going to college and getting through college. I was constantly seeking, I was constantly seeking to validate a sense of guilt and shame, which I didn’t have the language for at the time. But what validation I was looking for was I wanted to do right on what I knew was or sensed was my responsibility. As someone who had been given so much. As a as a kid, it’s probably no surprise that I drifted into a love of superhero stories. Spider Man was one of my favorite superhero stories and I loved in the Spider Man cartoon it was never much of a comic book reader but the cartoons of the 90s really spoke to me and and spider man in particular is also X Men, there was GI Joe, which I was obsessed with when I was a kid. Good, good, jingoistic, military, military loving media to make children make children think that war is glorious. I also love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which made me more deeply appreciate my ancestral love of pizza. A lot less nefarious was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I think, compared to GI Joe looking back on it. But Spider Man and the Spider Man cartoon Stan Lee’s Spider Man, the infamous, saying with great power comes great responsibility in this lesson that spider man Peter Parker learns from making a grave mistake that ultimately indirectly causes the death of his one of his mentors, his uncle, his uncle Ben, who was like a father to him.
Dave Ursillo 14:28
That sentiment stuck with me with great power comes great responsibility. At a young age, I was recognizing that I was in possession of power, although I wouldn’t have called it at the time, political power, economic power or power by way of the privileged position that I turned out to be and socio economically and racially and beyond. In this world in which we live today. I under stood the power to be in the opportunities that I was given. And the longer that I went, growing up, I recognize the extent of those privileges as something that that could be called power.
Dave Ursillo 15:18
And not power in the sense of, of holding power over people, but understanding that there’s perhaps a gift here. And that the gifts that I possessed not only external but felt internal to probably just by nature of, I don’t know, some good genetics. Having an exceptional private school education, I got a lot of attention and had my, my awareness and sense of self self really nurtured and my mental faculties and my emotional faculties really nurtured as well. With great power comes great responsibility. And so 911 happens and I go through a series of explorations. Exploring identities and potential career paths in the military, the GI Joe lover in me coming out. I spent a year in Army ROTC that Reserve Officer Training Corps program, my freshman year of college, I won an award during that year for exceptional willingness to serve his program in his country, I don’t really remember, it was a nice little badge. I quit the program thereafter, because military life I knew was not for me. I became a co editor in chief of my student newspaper at the College of the Holy Cross where I went to school, exploring journalism, and for the first time exploring, writing and persuasion, as a mode of self expression, but also a potential career path. And I ended up in a number of different internships and jobs, in government on state law at the state level, and then ultimately, on the federal level moved to Washington, DC for that White House Internship when I was 22. And figured that a long successful career in public service awaited me.
Dave Ursillo 17:10
But there were feelings, there were doubts, there were tremendous concerns about not only what I was doing, but who was I? Who was I. And this had been the great conundrum, the great paradox of my entire life of feeling throughout my young adulthood, those teenage years through this early adulthood, or later adolescence, in my early 20s. Like I just simply did not really know myself. And perhaps how could I, how could any of us really, our brains are still developing through the age of I think 24, 25 26. Our cognitive abilities are still undergoing development over these years. And so we’re expected to make, as you know, those of us who are privileged, do expected to make lifelong decisions based on a really fledgling sense of self. And I just couldn’t really remedy that I couldn’t remedy making lifelong what felt like lifelong decisions. Without knowing myself and without feeling certain about what I was choosing, and why I experienced some mild depression, I sought out a doctor who was probably not qualified to diagnose depression or anxiety, but did and I was just happy to have a label that was happy to have the validation to validate how I was feeling which felt terrible, and very disconnected from myself and very devoid of joy.
Dave Ursillo 18:56
I don’t know if I was clinically depressed, I guess it is, besides the point. But this is the part of the story was identifying with something that will felt like it was a physical manifestation and expression of a deeper inner avoidance or turmoil or doubt. And so I quit that job. And I left that career and I left a lot of those expectations that I had been walking in the shoes that I had been walking in my whole life behind. And so here I find myself it’s a late spring day, surrounded by the early spring, or I should say late spring, early summer, flowers, listening to the birds being drenched in sunlight in southern New England, where I grew up and found myself living once again. And as I still live today, having made time for Boston and New York City and Washington DC and traveling to what is it 29 countries now I think that I’ve visited throughout my life You and I put pen to paper. And I began to rewrite the story of my autobiographical self. The act of putting pen to paper, and describing who I thought I was, was exceptionally powerful. But it’s only become more and more powerful. The further I get away from that period of my life of now nearly well over 13 years later. The reason it’s become more powerful, the further I get away from it is because I am impressed, not in an egotistical or arrogant way, I’m not I wasn’t, I’m not impressed with my younger self, for having done something special because he knew what he was doing is with the opposite. I’m impressed by the fact that something impulsively, compulsively instinctually unconsciously drew me to a practice, an expression, largely out of desperation, to fulfill something so fundamental as to know oneself. By which I mean, I did not sit down one day and say, I’m going to rewrite the story of my life as I know it, I’m going to sit in with pen and paper literally and figuratively. Revise, edit myself, conception, I’m going to re litigate my memories, I’m going to apply my own editorial lens and choice and understanding, to reconstitute, who I know myself to be so that moving forward, I’ll have more self knowledge and figure out what I need to do with my life. It wasn’t that I felt terrible, I got some pen and paper I went outside to be alone, and to feel the nurturance of nature and sought some self connection.
Dave Ursillo 22:18
And in so doing, discovered, a practice discovered something that is human, fundamentally human, not necessarily the the Act of, of storing the self or understanding, connecting with accessing this what we call the autobiographical self, through writing, but through accessing story as a means of meaning making, because that’s what stories are. That’s what stories do. There are many different forms and kinds of stories and the word story almost, is tries to do too much. Not that the word is itself a thing, but you get my point. It’s kind of an umbrella term. Story refers to media, it refers to stories like spider man like GI Joe, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story refers to pop culture, storytelling, Star Wars and Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. Story refers to how we construct and communicate understanding with one another. When I teach a workshop or speak on a stage, which it’s been a while. Thanks, COVID or used to teach yoga classes years ago. I would say that, you know, the, the dog ate my homework. That was a story. Not a very good one. Not a very, you know, 2022 technologically appropriate story. I don’t know if dogs eat homework anymore. kids out there, you have to let me know. But the dog ate my homework. That was a story that we used to say, right? It was how, why we’re late for work. Because there’s traffic, the meaning that we make of events or circumstances that unfold in our lives, the choice that we assert, how we construct and communicate the context of what happens is storytelling. It’s not storytelling in a literary sense. It’s not storytelling in a pop culture says it’s not storytelling in a high science fiction fantasy story, but it’s its story.
Dave Ursillo 24:41
When we construct meaning, when we communicate understanding when we try to create context of the otherwise random and uncontrollable events and circumstances and happenings and beliefs and ideas and feelings, that storying that’s that’s the verb of story and to story. To make meaning to construct, understanding.
Dave Ursillo 25:05
And that’s what I instinctively did all those years ago, just like you, I’m sure have as well, dear listener, we are always constructing our own meaning. Our own meaning is not the only meaning that matters.
Dave Ursillo 25:23
We construct meaning in conjunction with in association with others, our loved ones, our communities, our states, towns, our countries and beyond. We are always making meaning at this instinctive level. And all these years later, I think back to that impulse, that, you know, I think Carl Jung would probably call it something that is like fundamental, the impulse the urge the instincts to construct meaning, especially if we’ve never done it before. This scene that I’ve painted for you, the story that I’ve been telling you was my real first introduction to the power to the art, to the significance of storytelling. I came from a lineage of storytellers in a lot of ways, the stories of my Italian ancestry in particular, what were what lived on and still live on. Most prominently today, the stories of my Irish ancestry, unfortunately, lost to death, to perhaps to overgeneralize, or stereotype, a discomfort around expressing emotion, thinking to past generations and just never had the opportunity to learn stories that were passed that could be passed on from my maternal grandfather, who passed away when I was 12.
Dave Ursillo 27:15
Conversely, on the Italian side of my family, the stories live on, around the dinner table they live on through the food they live on through the area in which I live, that is coming is also very, very Italian of Italian descent, and lives on in the culture in a lot of ways, and the Irish side does, too. But I just don’t have the connection to that. Unfortunately, I hope to hope to reconnect to it more love the Irish and I love Ireland, but the culture of my family didn’t get passed on through the stories in the ways that it did with the Italian side. And I think honestly, a lot of that has to do with food and the story that the stories that come through food. Where was I going with that? Now? I’m just hungry. Right?
Dave Ursillo 28:06
So what I was saying is this introduction that I had to storytelling is why in fact, we’re here. All these years later, 13 years on, we are you and I conversing now it’s a one sided conversation. I wish it was a it was a two way conversation. But we’re talking here on The New Story Is podcast on what I understand you clearly know by now, these nearly 30 minutes into this episode to be a solo pod or a solo podcast. See what I did there that abbreviation that’s pretty up on the lingo. This is a bit of a different episode. It’s just me talking with you and me wanting to introduce myself more to you than I have on this podcast in a long time.
Dave Ursillo 29:03
Over the course of the last seven months, we’ve been publishing new episodes under this title, The New Story Is and we welcomed listeners like you from all over the world. So big shout out and a huge thank you to our listeners in the United States. Also from Denmark, the United Kingdom, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Canada, India, Turkey, Belgium, Finland, Australia, Germany, Mexico, the Philippines, Spain, Costa Rica, Italy, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. We’ve brought stories, we’ve brought interviews we’ve brought thought Candy, as I sometimes like to call it, insights from a Experts opinions based on lived experiences, about what social cultural issues are ongoing in our world, what deserve attention, and what the new story may be, how we might change these stories, these experiences these issues for the good.
Dave Ursillo 30:23
And over the seven months, it has dawned on me that I haven’t really introduced myself to you. So, dear listener, welcome. Thank you. And please allow me to introduce myself as I have been already. My name is Dave Ursillo. In my heart of hearts, I call myself a writer for the reasons that you heard throughout this monologue so far, in times of need in times of distress, and now more and more over the years, proactively as an a resource or a practice in self resourcing. To access to empower to know myself, I write and I sought a career for many years, exclusively as a writer as an author. Now I find myself as a teacher of writing and creative self expression and holistic self expression. I work with a lot of professional helpers. So LM FTS LMH, sees psychologists clinical and otherwise PhDs. A lot of small business owners self employed creative entrepreneurs, those who have platforms who are coaches, life coaches, business coaches, wellness coaches, and have a platform through which they speak.
Dave Ursillo 31:47
They demonstrate thought leadership, I work with a lot of professionals who aren’t necessarily creative, but have a demonstrable level of leadership, internal or in their expressed through their careers were maybe changing career paths, or starting a new business for themselves. And what I do as a writer, as a creative as a creator, as a coach, and as a advocate, and proponent of storytelling and all its forms, is I help to shefford to guide to support to doula stories into the world. Sometimes being hands on and helping to write or ghost write those stories, sometimes helping clients to craft book proposals for their literary agents as they seek to publish their first books. I’ve turned more than two dozen probably now close to three dozen clients into first time authors having various roles throughout their creative processes. I work as a writing coach and help people to develop healthier and happier relationships to writing which sustains their writing efforts over time. I’m also presently studying as a graduate student, for my holistic clinical mental health counseling degree as I pursue licensure, and becoming a mental health counselor in the years to come. My life, my world, my work, and also my heart. Love and are just completely fascinated with what moves us as humans, what motivates us,
Dave Ursillo 33:30
and what motivates the best in us, by nature of this work of coming from a world like politics and studying political science, studying the social sciences, studying human behavior, in mass and now more individually or an individual within systems and individual within interpersonal dynamics. The macro and the micro of human behavior is what I’ve been fascinated with my whole life. It should come as no surprise when you hear somebody like me describing a fascination a compulsion, a desire a need to know himself. By extension, we become you know, teachers and learners of others as well.
Dave Ursillo 34:10
I have always been driven to understand what moves us and what motivates us as humans. And the good comes with the bad and the bad comes with the good in recent years, especially over the last six years, six plus years before the Trump presidential election, seeing the writing on the wall, seeing how the culture and society are shifting and moving, seeing the the wounds that have always been present in our society and in the American nation surface become impossible to ignore. And along with it my own examinations of my own many identities. recent experiences of privilegepushed me to go deeper into understanding the good and the bad, of human behavior and experience. The New Story Is as a podcast exists as a natural progression and evolution to my journey as a person and professionally, and my desires, my intentions for the future of having great meaningful, authentic conversations with people who are living with they believe, and are trying to change the stories of our world for the good. That’s subjective. I apply editorial lens and responsibility for those stories and having guests on even if I don’t agree with every story or every opinion. Being in this position, as the host of this show, I also produce the show, I pay for all the software. This is a passion project in a lot of ways. It’s also you know, a marketing and advertising tool for me as a professional and my business, The New Story Company.
Dave Ursillo 36:15
But I love conversation. I love conversing with people. I love asking questions, even though sometimes I’m on my game. And I feel like I’m really asking the right questions. And sometimes I feel like I’m stumbling over my words and trying to figure it out. As I go. I’m learning I’m doing my best NPR impressions. Every time I have an incredible guest on the show, as we so often do. But I seek I hunger for this, these conversations for this knowledge, I have become very skilled as a as a critic of assumptions and expectations, and behaviors and stories. in pop culture, in the news, in politics and beyond. And I find myself applying this discerning lens to decode and understand and to critique, in many cases, the logical fallacies,
Dave Ursillo 37:27
the incitements, to reactivity, to violence, to ego, to anger, that are so prominent in our shared culture today. And what ways that honestly sickened me, and I find upsetting, because it wasn’t always like this. Maybe you don’t remember a time when it wasn’t like this. But it wasn’t always like this. And as recently as when I quit my job and started a blog, Dave ursillo.com. And carried some hope, into an expression of hope of career as a as an aspiring author and, and as a writer. There was a lot more optimism. There was a lot more faith in one another, not religious faith, there was faith in one another, which I think in a sense is religious, not denominational. But the faith that we have in one another is paramount. Human beings as social creatures we do and always will rely on one another. There is no other way than together.
Dave Ursillo 38:53
And while many people have always throughout human history found ways to exploit and invert that necessity, for their own gain, financial, political, egotistical, and otherwise, it remains an absolute truth. Which does not mean that we all come together, hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and all of our problems go away. But faith in one another is essential. As hard as it can be, to maintain that faith. So in a lot of ways, these conversations are selfishly, my seeking to bolster that faith in people as in myself. And that’s one of the beautiful aspects of story that I want to leave you with these these thoughts are out regarding the importance and the power of story we had on a guest, Eduardo Placer there earlier this summer. And his words stand out to me, he said that human beings are really not great at learning lessons. And he meant as a species as a whole from like a big picture meta narrative perspective. Because if we were then why is there so much progress and regression?
Dave Ursillo 40:32
Why is there so much push and pull? As Why Y-Vonne Hutchinson, another guest of ours over the late summer said, all these these issues that we experience in society, they are not as novel as we think they are, they are recurrent. And I wonder if Eduardo, not to speak for him. But I wonder if he would say that the issues are recurrent, because we struggle as people to remember. If we struggle to remember the lessons of the past, to let the past inform our present, to act in such a way that the present and the future, do not replicate the past that we no longer want or deserve.
Dave Ursillo 41:18
We need more stories. And I know that that sounds maybe superficial, maybe cliche. Because we live in a time of so much content and noise. That it’s it’s paralyzing. It’s overwhelming. How much attention grabbing attention baiting. Content and stuff is bombarding us non stop to say we need more stories is like saying we need more TV shows. We need more artists, you know, performers we need more interruptions into our lives, do we? Absolutely not.
Dave Ursillo 42:03
I think your retort would be as it would be mind when we think about the act of consuming and how our consumer culture has become one where our attention is the commodity can listen to recent episode with the president and CEO of Consumer Reports Marta Tellado, who was so kind to join us and explain the landscape from a much more informed and, and poignant point of view than I can explain right here. What I mean when I say we need more stories is that there is never enough personal interpersonal, authentic, true, heartfelt, faithful stories being told in the world. Of course, we don’t need more superficial egotistical self serving bullshit. Of course, we do not need more consumption. In the form of mass media, to subsume our days, our attention spans our mindfulness, our happiness.
Dave Ursillo 43:10
We wonder why anxiety is the biggest pandemic along with loneliness, another global pandemic that have been afflicting the human condition. So severely over recent decades, we’re living in a novel time, the tools that are in our pockets are exceptionally powerful and have broken the space time continuum. It’s like we’re constantly living in the past, the present and the future at all times. And like we’re living in 7 billion universes all at once. We as a species are still trying to understand how to use these tools. But what remains true, what will always remain true is the instinct, the impulse, the inherent unconscious human desire to make meaning, to know the self, to connect with others, to see others in me, to see the self in you.
Dave Ursillo 44:21
We do it without choosing it. It is essential to our existence in a way that some might call fate or destiny. That I would say only by choice and awareness is a gift and not what feels like a burden or a curse.
Dave Ursillo 44:49
I don’t know in earnest if those are the only two options. If it’s either gift or or curse if it’s either power or burden. But for simplicity sake, if you will offer me the opportunity to break it, to oversimplify it, and to make a dichotomy, which I’m not really into, as you probably well know by now. But if the human instinct if the human impulse like I did those years ago, sit down and find my way to a page, with pen in hand, to try to make some meaning of what felt at the time to me, in my own limited point of view, my own individual experience, to be a burden, to be a curse, to be lost, to be without answers without knowledge.
Dave Ursillo 45:53
And in some ways, a fear of maybe never getting out of that place of feeling depressive, of feeling stuck, or feeling like I did not know who I was. Taking the pen, putting it to paper, and seeing my story emerge, from my mind, through my hands into physical form. taught me that I always had some element of power to change those words, whether I burned the page, ripped it up, eat it, I didn’t, or left it there, to look at it, like a mirror.
Dave Ursillo 46:49
When we take up the pen, literally, or figuratively speaking, when we craft, reflect upon on Earth, inhabit, share stories. You even if the instinct is unconscious, the consciousness the conscious choice, to source those stories, to share those stories and to do all the things that I said a moment ago, seeing ourselves in one another. Seeing the others in us seeing that we share more always than we are different, that differences are not a problem that what is different between us are valuable.
Dave Ursillo 47:47
Genetically, emotionally, spiritually, and otherwise. As a listener of this show, I asked you to take up the pen yourself, literally, or figuratively, in what ways you see fit as you see fit. I’m not asking you to be a writer, I’m not asking you to write a book, I’m not asking you to start a podcast, I’m not even asking you to keep listening. If you don’t want to, you know, buy now how to continue to listen, I’d love to have you, I do this for you. But I trust you to make those decisions. But I’m asking you to remember if this is the last thing that you hear that the instinct, the impulse, the unconscious desire and need to story will always and forever live within you. It is what it is in many ways to be human.
Dave Ursillo 48:50
And I do think that when the power that we possess as meaning makers and as storytellers goes unrealized or unrespected or under appreciated, that we do find experiences that lead us to loneliness, to isolation, to anxiety, to anger to fear to fret and what we would otherwise call a curse, a burden, a faded experience that leads us to something where we feel not ourselves distant from one another, fearful of the future. Absent from the present to know the power that we possess, to embrace it as a gift and in your own ways, on your own timeline, to embrace it, to make it conscious to make it chosen to be your stories teller, I think is a key to healing to community and to that faith of which I spoke in ourselves as in one another.
Dave Ursillo 50:14
Thank you for listening to this episode of The New Story Is is. I look forward to future episodes with future guests. Maybe with you. I hope you’ll be along for the ride. And I hope that this episode has connected us a little bit more deeply. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my story with you to share yours with me.
Dave Ursillo 50:40
You can email me Dave at Dave ursillo.com is the personal address Hello at The New Story Is another way of getting in touch.
Dave Ursillo 50:51
You can always find me at Dave ursillo.com. And The New Story Is we can listen to our full back catalogue of episodes. See what we’re doing at The New Story Company what we’re creating and crafting and sharing and much more. So until next time, story on bye for now.
