What lets you do things others may not be able to do?

I could honestly overthink this question for days.

The answer is your experience. Otherwise known as your story.

I met a man once, professionally, who I was reasonably sure I had nothing in common with. He was from West Asia, spoke multiple languages, was a lawyer, is a man. Our backgrounds were completely different in every way.

I’m from an Irish Catholic background. On both sides of my family, my forefathers escaped the Irish Potato Famine. One side landed in Australia, the other in New Zealand. My great-great grandfather from the Aussie side, worked as a labourer and helped create what is now Collins Street in Melbourne.

He was the only man in this group of workers who was literate, so he helped his crew write their letters home, back to Ireland. The foreman realised my great-great grandfather could read and write so hired him to be the tutor for his children.

From this, my great-great grandfather became a teacher. We have one of his class ledgers, where he wrote out his teaching plan of what the lessons were each day. It’s a fascinating read. His maths problems were things like “Mr Thompson wants to buy two stock horses for 4”6 each, and one gelding costing 2”. If he takes 8”4pence to market, how much money will he bring home?”.

Obviously my Irish ancestors married, had many children, made it through war and the depression, moved back to Melbourne and here’s me.

The gentleman I met fled with his family from a genocide and sought asylum in New Zealand. He learned to speak English at the age of 13. His mum used to bring curry to eat for lunch when they went to the beach over summer. He has a law degree and founded a nonprofit organization.

We laughed with each other about having over dramatic relatives. He expressed how his mum, whenever anything happened, would throw her hands up to the sky asking “why? Why us? Have we not survived so much?”. When my dad passed away, all of his siblings descended upon Melbourne, recommending books about morticians to the funeral director, filling a big share table in a pizza restaurant on Lygon Street and ordering Capricosa’s all round, getting lost and looking up “All Blacks” themed coffins on the internet.

We talked about what it was like to have parents that did things differently to regular Aussie mum’s and dad’s. My immigrant father used to drive me down to the fish market at five in the morning as the trucks were unloading the catch of the day. He would buy fillets of flake sliced directly off the side of a shark and fry it up in butter with potatoes for breakfast. Me and mum would sit in her bed eating homemade fish and chips at 6:30 in the morning.

My experience let me do something others might not know how to do, which was to, however unlikely it seemed at the beginning, find a connection with this man.

I haven’t counted them, but I would guess all my beliefs and opinions have changed throughout my life. Some don’t even exist anymore. But more recently, I have seen something similar, something I remember happening to me again and again, regardless of how old I was or what I was doing at the time:

A spark of recognition and the gasp of understanding when someone tells their story to me or I tell my story to them.

Without fail, every single time I am in a conversation with someone and it moves from describing what we think to telling the story of how we have experienced, it goes off- the spark, the gasp.

My motto is always- live to tell the tale.

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