Storyworthy. Matthew Dicks

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      It may take you a month, six months, or even a year to refine and focus your storytelling lens. You might give up five minutes of your day for an entire year and receive nothing in return. This process requires you to believe that eventually you will begin seeing these moments in your life, just as I and so many others have. Once it starts to happen, you will find your life changed forever.

      Last week my daughter, Clara, who’s nine years old now, asked me to pick her up. It was early in the morning, and she was feeling sleepy and a little sad that the weekend was over and we were heading back to school.

      I pick Clara up every time she asks, because I know that at some point, probably sooner than later, she will be too heavy for me to lift, or even worse, she will stop asking.

      So I’m holding Clara in my arms in our living room. The morning light is casting a warm, yellow glow in the room. The house is quiet. She and I are the only two awake. She wraps her arms around my neck and holds me tight.

      A minute later my arms start to shake. I’m struggling to keep her aloft. My right foot, which has a torn ligament, begins to throb. I decide to put her down.

      At that very moment, Clara pushes her face into the crook of my neck and whispers, “It’s just so nice to be held this close.”

      Then it occurs to me: I’m the only person in the world who picks up my daughter like this anymore. She’s become too big for my wife or her grandparents to lift. I’m the last person who will ever hold her like this. I’m the last person who will hold her like a little girl.

      I tighten my hold on her. I ignore my throbbing foot and tiring muscles. I whisper back, “Let’s just stay like this for a little bit. Okay?”

      “Sounds great, Daddy,” she whispers back.

      We hold each other in the growing light of a spring morning until she sighs and whispers, “Okay, let’s eat.”

      If I hadn’t been doing my Homework for Life, this moment would have been lost to me. Even if I had recognized its importance (which is doubtful), I would have been hard-pressed to recall it years later.

      If you’re a parent, you know this is true. Our lives are filled with beautiful, unforgettable moments with our children that turn out to be entirely and tragically forgettable.

      But now I will own that moment for the rest of my life. I can close my eyes today and return to that room, with the morning light streaming through the windows, my daughter pressed close to me, whispering words that I will never forget.

      Someday that moment may find its way into a story.

      Nowadays, Homework for Life doesn’t even take me five minutes. Today I can see most of the moments while in the midst of them. I recognize them in real time. I have often inputted them into my spreadsheet long before the end of the day. This will eventually happen for you too. If you have commitment and faith.

      I give this to you: Homework for Life.

      Five minutes a day is all I’m asking. At the end of every day, take a moment and sit down. Reflect upon your day. Find your most storyworthy moment, even if it doesn’t feel very storyworthy. Write it down. Not the whole story, but a few sentences at most. Something that will keep you moving, and will make it feel doable. That will allow you to do it the next day. If you have commitment and faith, you will find stories. So many stories.

      There are meaningful, life-changing moments happening in your life all the time. That dander in the wind will blow by you for the rest of your life unless you learn to see it, capture it, hold on to it, and find a way to keep it in your heart forever.

      If you want to be a storyteller, this is your first step. Find your stories. Collect them. Save them forever.

      In addition to my many other jobs, I’m an elementary-school teacher, so I feel like I have the right to assign homework to anyone I choose.

      I choose you.

       STORY BREAK

       Naked in Brazil

      I’m telling stories to an audience of about seven hundred high-school students at an American school in São Paulo, Brazil, in the summer of 2015. When I finish performing, I open the session to questions. They come fast and furious.

      I love Q&A. Ask me a question, and I’ll tell you a story.

      I’ve been answering questions for about fifteen minutes, handing out prizes to students who ask me especially challenging questions, when a student asks me:

      “You write novels. You blog every day. You write musicals and magazine articles. You tell stories on stages. Why? Why do you share so much of yourself?”

      I stop. I think for a moment. I’ve never been asked this question before.

      An unexpected answer comes to mind. “I think . . .” I say slowly, wondering if the answer I’m about to give is correct. Trying it on for size. “I think,” I repeat, “that I’m trying to get the attention of a mother who never paid me any attention and is now dead and a father who left me as a boy and never came home.”

      It’s a remarkable thing. I have been writing every single day of my life since I was seventeen years old, without exception. I have been blogging every single day of my life since 2003, sharing my thoughts, ideas, complaints, and moments from my life with thousands of readers. I’ve been publishing novels since 2009. And I’ve been standing on stages since 2011, spilling my guts, sharing my deepest, darkest secrets and most embarrassing, hilarious moments, and not once did I ever ask myself, “Why?”

      “Why do you do it, Matt? Why do you share so much of yourself with the world?”

      Now I know. Standing in the carpeted aisle of an auditorium five thousand miles from home, I have stumbled upon the answer to a question I never asked.

      That is storytelling at its finest.

      The auditorium goes silent. I go silent. Seven hundred teenagers stare at me, waiting for my next move.

      After a moment, I say, “Okay, remember when we talked about finding those five-second moments in our lives? Those moments of transformation? Realization? I think I’m having one right now. Yup. I am. Definitely.”

      I still stand by that answer today. I have yet to craft or tell the story about the time I discovered my primary reason for writing and telling so many stories (in front of seven hundred Brazilian teenagers), but I will someday.

      The young lady who asked me that question received a prize that day.

       CHAPTER FOUR

       Dreaming at the End of Your Pen

      I don’t СКАЧАТЬ