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Topic: How one story can set the course of your life
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Someone told me a story once...
Today as I read Avdi Grimm's Active Record Soup, I was reminded of how much the old folk story Stone Soup has had an impact on my life.
I was raised Unitarion Universalist which, as far as religions, was very free and open. Stone Soup was a mainstay of both sunday school and our youth groups at summer camp.
The story has many facets, but the idea that if we band together and make the smallest of contributions that what is seemingly impossible for the individual can be accomplished as a community has always stayed with me.
In fact I would say it is ingrained in me at practically a molecular level at this point. For a long time I assumed that it was a bedrock children's tale even outside of UU circles. When I moved to New Zealand and started working on the Kete project, very much inspired by Stone Soup, I would use "like stone soup" as shorthand every now and then. I quickly found out I had to explain what I meant.
I continue to point myself in the direction of work and play that takes advantage of the ideas behind the story. I've been an Open Source developer for like a decade and half at this point. Over the last year I've been helping build AskThem.io.
And seemingly all of this started with someone telling me a story. A humorous, but meaningful story. The beauty is that in the telling of it, just communicating an idea from an adult to a bunch of kids, the meaning of Stone Soup is examplified.
