A Culture of Measurement

I attended a Michael Meade workshop a couple of months ago. For those of you who don't know Michael, he's a mythologist, multi-book author, storyteller, and riffs brilliantly on almost everything.

Michael is the kind of person, who – as soon as he starts talking – you start taking notes, only stopping when he does. Needless to say, a lot of ideas get stirred up, which I want to share over the next few postings.

My first note entry observes that we live in a "culture of measurement." That is, we tend to quantify and qualify everything according to facts, i.e., what we "know" to be true. As Michael pointed out, though, it's not that facts don't matter; it's that they don't tell the whole story.

In real life what this means is that each of us is far more than the sum of our parts. It may be a fact that you practice medicine or law; nurture a family; create beautiful art pieces; ride waves masterfully. But you are far more than a doctor, attorney, wife and mother, artist or surfer.

You are a tapestry of experiences, emotions, memories, dreams, roads not taken and roads that stretch ahead. To allow anyone else to define, quantify or measure your story for you is to lose ownership of your own narrative – and your ability to create a new story for yourself.