Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Guest Blog: On Story-Telling and the Shared Humanity that Binds Us All


By: Colin Halloran

Having embarked on a recent book tour on Veterans’ Day, Monday November 11th, I had my final appearance this past Monday the 25th. My journey took me more than 3,800 miles, which gave me more than 60 hours of sitting in my car, contemplating the world we’re living in. Here’s a sampling of those contemplations.

This whole endeavor was born out of the fact that the university where I teach did not have any events planned for Veterans’ Day, and classes were scheduled regularly. That’s all well and good—after all, Columbus did way more than those who have served this country he “discovered”—but I felt that there should at least be some sort of on-campus acknowledgment of the day.

Mind you, I’m biased. I proudly served this country, and regardless of any lasting negative impact on my life, I will always be proud of that service. I wrote a book about those experiences, the impact they had, and I’ve been fortunate enough to continue in the military’s tradition of service by sharing my story in order to help other vets come to terms with theirs, and in order to educate civilians on just what that experience can mean. Remember, we volunteer to wear the flag and bear the brunt of the burden so that the other 99% of the population doesn’t have to.
(Related: I Never Imagined being a 20-Something Veteran: A Soldier Reflects on Why It's Important to Share His Story)

So I brought together a talented group of veteran writers to come together for a panel at the university on the evening of Veterans’ Day, so that we could share our stories, so that our experiences could live out in the ether, not just deep within our own minds. I had already been invited out to Ohio University to participate in their week-long symposium on “Conflict & Contact,” so a panel at my own school seemed like an appropriate way to kick off the week. Naturally, when my friends at the Warrior Arts Alliance expressed how they wished I could be out in St. Louis for Veterans’ Day, I said, “Well, I could head down after my readings in Ohio and be there Friday if you really wanted.” They did. And a tour was born.

Now, I know I’ve spent a lot of time in the past ranting and being seemingly frustrated with the world, but this post is different. These past 2 weeks confirmed for me what I have known to be true, if not always demonstrated: there’s a Hell of a lot of good in this world.

Whether it was a 19-year-old college student, or the 65-year-old wife of a Vietnam vet, or a small town school librarian with no ties to war, I found that people were incredibly receptive to my message. Even when they admittedly hadn’t looked at war in the ways I was presenting it, namely as a human experience that has become largely white noise in this country over the last decade, the people I encountered embraced this view, and later thanked me for broadening the scope of their thinking. This is not to toot my own horn, but to point out that even in the face of uncomfortable, often really depressing conversations, people in this country care enough to listen, to change their views, and to take on the burden of moral responsibility that they must bear as citizens of a nation at war.

In St. Louis, at the Missouri History Museum, I had the privilege of working with a group of veterans, who had served in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. We spent the entirety of the morning sitting at a large, pieced together conference table, sharing our stories. I had never seen so many grown men cry. I had never felt a part of something so deep. I have not felt so close to, felt such a sense of belonging with a group of complete strangers since my time in uniform. It was as though we all entered that room a bit broken, each person missing a small piece of his or herself, but by the end of the morning (which culminated in a group hug—seriously), we had filled in those missing bits for each other. Because what was missing was that knowledge that though we all have our own story, our own experiences, we are, in fact, not on our own.

After spending the week giving readings, which entails leaving much of myself out there for the audience, and often leaves me feeling emotionally drained, being able to help others share their stories, through conversation and creative writing, had the opposite effect. I left the museum feeling fulfilled in a way I didn’t get on any other leg of the tour.

I guess the point is this: no matter how isolated we may feel, no matter how disconnected this country or this world seems to be, there is a deep-rooted humanity that binds us all together. And we can find it by sharing our stories—not just by telling ours, but by listening to others’.
And if we do that, we’ll find that what we thought was missing wasn’t missing at all; it just hadn’t yet been found.


Colin D. Halloran is an Afghanistan combat veteran, English professor, and poet who leads student and teacher workshops on understanding war through poetry. He earned an MFA at Fairfield University, and he is an associate editor at Copaiba.org. His book of poetry on his war experiences, Shortly Thereafter, won the 2012 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and is a Massachusetts Must-Read Book of 2013. He has spoken at conferences at the state and national levels, including the 2010 Connecticut Council for the Social Studies Conference and the 2012 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference.