A Million Stories

The young man who moved to America from Pakistan when he was 12, now desperately trying to put some breathing room between himself and his strict, traditional family.

The older woman, half of a husband-wife pair of clergy, back in architecture school to get away from the endless ache of social services work.

The colleague who has a massive project dumped on her desk, without resources or recognition.

The colleague who had done strong work on a different project and had it taken away from her after four years.

The couple selling their house, neither of whom are convinced they want to.

The couple buying their house, waiting on edge for the call that the contract has been signed.

The friend who ran a job search only to have the job itself placed upon him.

The non-profit organization with the hundred-year history that looks prestigious from outside but is a hollow and hemorrhaging shell when seen in detail.

The college president who hires a new dean and then rescinds the offer just before the start date, having stumbled across the new hire's skeletons.

The supervisor and supervisee who were uncomfortably forced to switch roles.

The faculty member who carpet-bombs the e-mail boxes of president, provost, board members, and every professional organization, demanding that his agenda take precedence.

The provost who wants that faculty member banished for harassment.

The college administrator finishing a flimsy degree from a shady college in order to try to gain some job security.

The board member who sees accreditation rules as mere suggestions, because he's also such a committed (and good) teacher.

The colleague who takes every opportunity to grasp change and render it toothless, because he's proud of the work he's done in the old system.

The friend who worked heroically to design and launch an innovative new program, who now wants nothing more than to leave it behind and get back to teaching.

The person who finished second for a job and admits that the person chosen first is a better fit for the organization as it stands, though not for what it could be.

The person who could have had a job, and instead writes a letter to the search committee to explain why she won't be continuing her candidacy.

The young new postmistress, trained to follow procedures, who finds herself running a tiny rural center that is the social hub of its community, with no knowledge of the residents or their norms.

The graduate student who says she's in grad school because "she wants to get it right this time."

The graduate student who resents broad liberal thinking, because he feels like he's being forced to become a "little Renaissance man" instead of the effective and focused professional he aspires to be.

The heavy man who eats his emotions.

The gaunt woman who burns up her brittleness.

We see people going about their lives and believe, somehow, that they are self-evident.  They are students, teachers, administrators, colleagues, friends.  And we are wrong.  After all, every label we wear ourselves — student, teacher, administrator, colleague, friend — we wear uncomfortably, knowing the ways in which it doesn't quite fit, doesn't meet the real contours of the self. The same is true all around us, of everyone we encounter. 

Nora and I have a saying — "there's a million stories" — that we bring out whenever we get below the surface of someone we thought we knew, when we start to see "a student" as a person, when we start to see "a colleague" as a friend.  It's our lullaby for the endless re-discovery of subtlety and context and invisible lives that exist just below the roles we play.