On October 9 and 10, I sat in the beautiful Schermerhorn Symphony Hall in Nashville, not in rows, but in cozy groups of swiveling chairs gathered around coffee tables.

The stage had been transformed into a cinematic dreamscape. Un Unreal Engine-powered LED screen displayed imagery from the imaginary Academie of Narratology, with a runway that projected the speakers out into the room beneath another set of LED screens designed to look like a giant book taken from an ancient library.

It was a beautiful, intentional delivery system for talks about imagination, personal story, and big narratives.

A sightseeing ride through inspiration.

It was STORY 2025.

The Beauty and Limits of Watching

After attending the event virtually in 2020 and 2022, this was my first time in the room. And while I loved the idea of rethinking traditional seating, most of us still faced the stage, admiring and applauding the speakers, but not with each other (except for when Elizabeth Koch took us through a Perception Box exercise during her talk).

I was deeply entertained and inspired, but still felt like an observer, not a participant.

When the Crowd Writes the Script

A week later, my family and I walked into Wilma Chan Park in Oakland, ready to march with thousands during the No Kings protest. We shared hugs and smiles with neighbors and teachers from our son’s elementary school.

A person in a wheelchair rolled across the park dispensing bubbles into the air from a machine attached to the back.

“No hate, no fear,” we chanted as we waited for the march to start. “Immigrants are welcome here.”

We marched behind an inflatable Snoopy, danced down 13th Street to a band playing the opening music to Beyonce’s Homecoming set at Coachella, and gratefully accepted zines from the Little Free Library of Resistance and bottles of water from a friendly Oaklander as we approached the lake.

“Christians Condemning Christian Nationalism Since 1525,” said one sign.

“Stand Up for the U.S. Constitution,” said the sign held by my son’s first grade teacher.

“You’re a good Mom,” said an elderly marcher to me as I fanned my son with my giant snap fan.

“Would you like some breeze?” I asked, turning to her for a little fanning in her direction.

Our Congresswoman, Lateefah Simon, spoke with such fervor that her voice rang across Lake Merritt. “We are living in the midnight of our democracy, but midnight don’t last forever — dawn is coming.”

It wasn’t a performance. It was a moment.

We weren’t watching, we were IN IT.

Different Invitations to a Bigger Story

Both of these experiences — the conference and the story — were trying to provide a measure of group transformation. Both invited us into a bigger story.

But in one, we watched. In the other, we participated, each of us bringing our own story to the collective journey.

Is this a critique of one or the other? Definitely not. Storytelling can be beautiful, aesthetic, aspirational, inspirational.

But collective narrative? It has to let people be part of the action. It gets messy.

The Narrative Belongs To All of Us

Whether we meet in the glow of a conference or the heat of a protest, we are all co-writers of the narrative we are living together.

No one is just a character.

Our stories may begin in beauty, but it is through action that we take those stories and leverage them to create change — in ourselves, in others, and in the world we live in on the daily.

I’m still thinking about what it means to observe versus participate, and what it means to shape collective story with intention rather than watching it unfold. I’d love to hear your thoughts — when have you felt the difference between watching the story, and being part of it?