Bill Buckner & The Burning Bush

Agency or Communion: Which type of Story do you live by?

Imagine two different types of stories.

The first is your story, from the day you were born until today. It includes your childhood and family life, education and jobs, friendships and romances, hopes and dreams… everyone and everything you’ve ever encountered and experienced. How you edit all the raw material from your life story and tell it to others and to yourself may change over time. But generally, it’s a story driven by your choices and actions. In this narrative, you are the main character, the protagonist, the hero. The world revolves around you.

The second type of story casts you as one character among many. It’s a bigger, ensemble drama in which you (and many others) play a supporting role but not a decisive one.

Consider the story of the Boston Red Sox, the baseball team I’ve rooted for since I was old enough to throw a ball and swing a bat. The Sox have a long history that stretches back to the early 1900s, with some memorable characters and critical turning points.

For instance, when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the (hated) New York Yankees in 1919 — that was a turning point. Bill Buckner watching the ball roll under his glove in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series — another key (and heartbreaking) plot twist. Dave Roberts stealing second base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, and Curt Schilling pitching Game 6 as blood soaked through his right sock — both are seminal moments for the Sox on their way to winning the 2004 World Series, the team’s first championship since 1918.

The first story — where you stand alone in the spotlight — is all about agency: Yours.

The second story is mostly about communion. It’s about the ongoing relationship between a team, its players and fans, and a city. The main characters with agency are Ruth, Buckner, Roberts, and Schilling, not you or me. Yet the story still matters to us because it’s entertaining, and because the Red Sox provide shared memories that connect people across generations and geography. My grandfather rooted for the team, as did my mom. My brother does. So do his kids and my kids and many of my friends. Even when we’re not physically together, the Sox are one way we can connect from a distance: Did you see that insane comeback against the Yankees last night??!!

Now that’s thrilling! Yet there’s one problem with relying on professional baseball to animate your life: It’s just a game. It’s a bunch of grown men, most of them millionaires, trying to hit a small ball with a stick. Yes, it can be exciting, but it’s ultimately meaningless. The stakes, in the end, are extraordinarily low. And the main characters are mostly interchangeable, traded from one team to another to yet another. Or as Jerry Seinfeld once observed: When you root for a baseball team, you’re essentially rooting for laundry.

A story for the ages

In the early 1990s, I attended a Passover seder in Jerusalem with hundreds of Russian emigres who had fled the former Soviet Union to seek refuge in Israel. I didn’t know anyone there and I don’t speak Russian, yet I understood precisely what we were doing together and the Story we were telling.

Sitting on benches beside long tables covered with white tablecloths and seder plates, we told the Story of the Hebrews’ Exodus from Egypt. We ate matzah, charoset, and maror. We sang Dayeinu and Eliyahu Hanavi. We asked questions about the past and present, searched for answers, and dreamed about a better future. We told a Story that our family has been telling for millennia. It’s the Story that serves as the foundation for the entire Biblical narrative. Without the Hebrews’ liberation from Egypt, there would be no revelatory moment at Sinai… no Torah… no Jewish commonwealths (we’re currently on #3)… no Temples… no Prophets… no Jesus and no Muhammad… no sense of “progress”… no Holy Roman Empire… no Martin Luther… and no Martin Luther King, Jr.

Surrounded by Russian Jews who spoke a language I did not understand in a cavernous function hall in an unfamiliar land, I was with my mishpachah — my extended family. Far away from home, I was home.

Agency, communion, and empathy

In “Life’s Stories” (The Atlantic, August 10, 2015), Julie Beck writes:

In his research, [psychology professor Jonathan] Adler has noticed two themes in people’s stories that tend to correlate with better well-being: agency, or feeling like you are in control of your life, and communion, or feeling like you have good relationships in your life.

But I wondered: Though agency may be good for you, does seeing yourself as a strong protagonist come at a cost to the other characters in your story? Are there implications for empathy if we see other people as bit players instead of protagonists in their own right?

Great question. But let’s take it a step beyond empathy: Does a world in which each one of us has a unique story to tell — a world with eight billion individual stories with eight billion protagonists, all with agency — lead to a decrease in empathy AND to an increase in atomization and loneliness? You have your story, and I have mine.

This leads to the question that animates much of my Out of Babel project: Which stories provide both agency AND communion? Which stories cast you as the protagonist of your own adventure AND as a member of the ensemble cast of a bigger story — both at the same time?

The Bible is one such Story, though certainly not the only one. There are others, but when you try to list them, you discover there aren’t that many. It’s a very short list.

You think I’m wrong? Well, then you try it. How many Stories can you name that offer you both agency and communion — and that matter more than a Red Sox game?

No rush. Take your time. I’ll wait here.