Everyone Has a Story

The premise that every person carries an unseen history that earns them tolerance and a hearing before judgment. In Becoming, Michelle Obama traces it to a family instruction: “Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.” It pairs with her observation that “empathy scales close up” — “when voters got to see me as a person … it’s harder to hate up close.”

In Our Towns, the idea surfaces as a posture toward conversation. The Fallowses note that questions like “What do you do?” or “Where do you go to church?” are really veiled probes of social standing — “Where do you fit in my world?” The more humane alternative some people offered was the open-ended invitation: “So, what’s your story?” Kyle ties the passage to Asking Questions and to this concept — letting a person take any direction to explain who they are rather than being sized up and boxed in.

Where this appears

• Becoming — the family lesson that everyone carries an unseen history deserving tolerance; empathy scaling close up.
• Our Towns — “So, what’s your story?” as the open-ended alternative to status-probing questions.