Platitudes and Storytelling

I hated hearing platitudes as a young adult. They were so flat, so obvious and two dimensional. There’s no faster way to elicit an eye roll. However, the wisdom that comes with experience has changed my opinion. When someone tells me don’t judge a book by it’s cover, my brain flashes back to all the times when a person or situation turned out to be quite different from what I initially guessed. The coworker that I ended up marrying, the friend who became an enemy, or the friend who became a lover. The phrase “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” means something to me only because of my lived experience.

When we want someone to really understand the depth and importance of these phrases, a platitude alone is not enough. It is impossible to convey the real meaning to someone without that experience unless context is provided. I have experienced and seen the effects that a simple phrase can have when accompanied by enough context to give it depth, to make it three dimensional.

For example, the famous commencement speech by the great David Foster Wallace, titled “This is Water”. The speech could be summarized by a short list of banal platitudes (as DFW himself calls them). And indeed he states:

“...the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.”

The eloquence of this speech in its entirety could convince even the most serious and dubious amongst us of the importance of its message. It is in the story, the context, and the details that we convince ourselves of its validity.

Another great example of enough context to win over the skeptic is Heather Havrilesky’s essay “Lost Treasure” from her collection “What If This Were Enough?”. In just over 3 pages she discussed her memories of looking at her elderly neighbor’s collections of glued-together twigs and flowers. As a child she felt impatient and bored, and as an adult she realized that the process of living in the moment required to find and assemble those items was what really mattered. It was about the process of procuring the items, the concentration and commitment needed to spend all day on it. The attention to detail required to notice the little things around you- the piece of moss just the right shade of green, the perfectly shaped leaf. You could almost say the essay is an extended and more compelling version of any number of vapid and overused platitudes such as “live in the moment” or “life is about the journey not the destination” etc. etc.

Advice without a story falls flat, and the world’s greatest storytellers know this well. My mind is of the type to disassemble a story and inspect its parts. I never was one for storytelling. I have learned to appreciate the beauty in succinct wisdom, but still struggle to remember to provide proper context when I am solicited for advice, whether in my personal life or at work. As they say, “show don’t tell”.