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It's common to tell stories around a campfire

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Everyone comes from a different background, and there are many stories about traditions, cultures, and more

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The story of how a boy has a wild summer with his friends

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What it takes to tell a great story

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Everyone has a storyteller inside them, and everyone has a story to tell. James Joyce once said he never met an uninteresting person. The difference between people who seem interesting and people who don't is their ability to turn their experiences into compelling stories - which is why we make storytelling such a big part of our bootcamps.

It's true that some people have more natural storytelling ability than others. But anyone can learn the craft of storytelling. That's because storytelling, like so many other skills, is just a series of behaviors and principles you have to learn. With some attention and consistent practice, you can have people hanging on every word of your story - in bars and clubs, at professional networking events, and on dates.

In this piece, we'll be talking about those key behaviors and principles to up your storytelling game.
Good storytellers inject emotion into their stories.
Two people can tell the exact same story with wildly different results. One captivates, while the other has the audience checking its watch. While we tend to look for exciting stories, the actual story material isn't what separates a good story from a bad one. What makes the difference is the emotion the storyteller puts into their narrative.

For example, I'm a big fan (along with three million other people) of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. Carlin makes history captivating by connecting historical moments with people and feelings, not just dates and events. You don't just get a sense of what happened and when. You learn what people were thinking, what they were worried about, what emotions motivated them and drove them. Carlin creates empathy for real people, drawing the listener into his narrative.

Every story has an emotional core, and that emotional core is how the storyteller feels about the events they're describing. Everything else is just window dressing. So think about how you felt when your story actually happened. What was motivating you? What troubled you? How did you feel about your surroundings? How do you feel now about what happened then? If you can express that, you can create connections with your listeners, and trust that they'll be hanging on every word.

Structurally, you want to find opportunities in your story to weave your feelings and motivations into its events. Consistently return to your experience of what is happening in the narrative. The more emotion you can impart in your story, the better. This doesn't always have to be deep or complex. In fact, taking a second to say something as simple as "I couldn't believe it!" or "At this point, I was terrified" gives your story the emotional charge it needs to connect. You don't have to go into great detail or be histrionic. You simply have to signpost your feelings and motivations, and share them authentically with the audience.

As the old saying goes, you have to be interest ed to be interest ing. If you don't care about your story, why will anyone else?
Good storytellers know their narrative.
You need emotion to make a story compelling. But every story is really just a sequence of events that need to be told in the right order. Extraneous information slows a story down and can have people wondering about the ultimate point. It's like telling a joke: You don't go on detours about what the chicken was doing for the last three weeks before it crossed the road. You tell only the parts that propel the joke forward. The same applies to storytelling.

So how do you know what's essential to your story?

First, remember that every story starts before the main event. Why were you in the situation that you were in to begin with? What key information does the audience need to appreciate the rest of the story? That's where the story begins. You need to tee up the story that you're going to tell before you start telling it. This shouldn't be your life story, but you should succinctly explain how you got into the situation you're about to discuss.

Once you've done that, you need to think about the logical order in which you tell the story. That's often - but not always - the important events of the story in the order they happened in. But sometimes it makes sense to back up a bit and fill the listener in on some piece of background information that wouldn't have made sense at the beginning of the story. And while some small details that aren't totally relevant to the story can be thrown in for emotional effect, you don't want to get bogged down in irrelevant information.

Once you've got your skeleton, start thinking about what fills it in. Who else is involved in your story? What does the listener need to know to understand the other characters in your story? Fleshing out the other people in your story is one simple way to make the overall story more compelling and relatable. Even if the person listening can't relate to you, they might be able to enter the story through another character.

While every story is different, most stories follow a general pattern. You start with the background, then tell the listener how the story started. This is the event that triggers the story to begin. The action should rise throughout until it reaches a dramatic peak - a point of no return - also known as the climax. You then drive from the climax to the final events of the story. After that, you can briefly discuss the consequences of the story. This is called the denouement, and it's the bookend of the narrative.

Following this general pattern is crucial to being a good storyteller. Otherwise, you'll find that most people, who have an intuitive sense of what makes a good story, will grow restless.

Above all, a narrative is always moving forward in some way, even when it takes a step back. The narrative is the sequence of events, but it's also what creates the tension in the story. If emotion is what draws a listener in, the narrative is what keeps them wanting more. When you structure your narrative right, the listener will want to know what happens next.
Good storytellers create rapport.
The whole reason to tell a story isn't to hear yourself speak. It's to create a connection between you and the listener. That's the magic of great storytelling. And like any kind of rapport-building exercise, there's one simple rule in play: high risk, high reward; low risk, low reward.

Basically, the higher the level of self-disclosure in the story, the deeper the connection you're going to make with your listeners. But there's also the risk that you might expose too much and embarrass yourself. Alternately, you might come across too strong and alienate or even offend your listeners. Becoming a good storyteller is about mastering that trade-off over time.

Ultimately, that's a calculated risk you're going to have to make when you tell a personal story. But I've broken it down into three basic levels to help you get a feel for what you're getting yourself into:

Light disclosure involves amusing anecdotes about yourself and the world around you. Light disclosure tends to be brief, with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. This tends to be a quick little anecdote about something funny or interesting that happened to you in the course of your daily life.

Medium disclosure gets more serious, because it involves your beliefs, opinions and ideas about the world. This is a riskier proposition, because there's someone out there who's bound to be affected by your thoughts and feelings. Medium disclosure is best for after you have established some degree of rapport with your listeners. You need to feel reasonably safe that, even if they don't agree, that they won't be looking for the nearest exit.

Heavy disclosure is, as you might guess, the riskiest and most difficult kind of storytelling. This is where you begin sharing your fears, insecurities, failures and pain points with your listeners. There's a two-fold risk with heavy disclosure. First, you might come across as needy or validation-seeking. Second, your listeners might laugh at you rather than with you. You want to save heavy disclosure for situations where you feel very safe sharing deeply personal and painful parts of your life. You also want your storytelling ability to match the level of disclosure, which is a matter of practice.
Good storytellers practice their craft.
For the most part, when you're out at a bar, business networking event or other place where you're meeting new people, you'll want to stick mostly to light self-disclosure with maybe a little bit of medium self-disclosure once you've started to make a connection. Heavy self-disclosure is either for people you already know very well, or people that you want to become trusted confidants and companions.

Rapport is ultimately what you want to achieve when you tell a story, so don't gloss over thinking over this part. One of the most powerful reasons to tell a story is that it allows you to connect with several people all at once. Just how much do you want to connect? A good storyteller is aware of his level of disclosure and uses it skillfully.

When it comes to telling stories, the more practice you get, the better you're going to be. That might mean that you head off to a Toastmasters or join a storytelling group. It might mean that you practice your stories around your bedroom or record yourself for your own personal review. However you choose to practice, here are some pointers to getting the most out of the time you spend.

Start by listing out some of your favorite stories about yourself. These don't have to be super detailed, just something to jog your memory, like "the linguine incident." It's good to have one or two bragworthy stories, but you don't want all your identity stories to be chest-puffing braggadocio. That can be a real turn off when you're talking to people, especially people you don't know very well.

Pick one of your favorites and list the important elements of the story that jump into your head. Write them down in an order that makes sense. Now ask yourself how you got in the situation. There's your backstory. That's the skeleton of your identity story. Everything else is going to hang off of that.

Now practice telling the story without looking at your notes. You don't want your story to seem canned or like you're reading from a script. You want to write down the answers to the above questions, but that's more for the purpose of getting your thoughts in order. Remember what I said earlier: This story is a bit like telling a joke. So you want to try telling it a few different ways, remembering the important parts, emphasizing different bits and playing around with your story to see what works and what doesn't.
Lead image by João Gabriel da Fonseca
Finally, when you're telling your story to an empty room, you want to pay attention to your tone of voice. Your tonality is going to do help the listener know when you're responding emotionally or reaching a climax. Use your voice to communicate the feeling you want your listeners to experience. You want to sound confident at all times - even when you're being silly or vulnerable - because that's what's going to show your listeners that everything you're telling them is totally true, no matter how strange or unreal it might sound. Always avoid vocal fry and uptalk. That's never a good look on anyone.

It takes time and practice to become a good storyteller. Don't shy away from putting in the reps. The process of learning how to be a good storyteller is just as fun (and even more rewarding) as telling the story itself. And when you do master the art, you'll be amazed at how much easier it is to create emotional connections with the people around you - one of the most important skills we can master in life.

Johnny Dzubak - author of 56 posts on The Art of Charm

Johnny happened upon the field of Social Dynamics and dating coaching quite by accident. Having been a touring musician much of his life, he felt the need to contribute positively to the world and was interested in the power of personal transformation. Johnny began educating himself about Social Dynamics and incorporating the concepts he learned into his day-to-day life. Soon after, he began coaching for a small Social Dynamics company out of Washington, DC; it was then that he met AJ & Jordan. View all posts by Johnny Dzubak

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Everyone has a storyteller inside them, and everyone has a story to tell. James Joyce once said he never met an uninteresting person. The difference between people who seem interesting and people who don't is their ability to turn their experiences into compelling stories - which is why we make storytelling such a big part of our bootcamps.

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A YouTube channel that draws the life of other YouTubers and famous people as they tell their stories

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"draw my life" abby lee miller dance moms maddie ziegler disney kardashian kanye

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DRAW MY LIFE brings you the greatest lives in history - armed with only a whiteboard and a marker pen. Subscribe to see new movie stars, pop stars, sports st...

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Cute poem that tells the story of a dog named Rum

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Poem About A Loveable Guard Dog, The Ballad Of Rum

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A story based on a real dog who still watches over our yard in his own way. A dog wandered into our garden one day, A friendly old mutt, didn't look like a stray. We never discovered whence he had come, But we brushed him and fed him and the kids called him Rum.

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Connection is not letting anyone be alone during tough times

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Sending hope and hugs to our friends in Puerto Rico & Mexico. You are in our thoughts. ❤️

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Sending hope and hugs to our friends in Puerto Rico & Mexico. You are in our thoughts. ❤️ https://t.co/0gALp6mHXL

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Making connections in learning helps you learn better and learn more

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When I think of "connection", one of the things I think of is Family Connection

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A book on how we connect with others

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Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others

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What accounts for the remarkable ability to get inside another person's head-to know what they're thinking and feeling? "Mind reading" is the very heart of what it means to be human, creating a bridge between self and others that is fundamental to the development of ...

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We are all pieces to a puzzle that connects all together in some way

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"Cherish your human connections - your relationships with friends and family"
-Barbara Bush

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Relating to someone on their feelings and feeling their pain as well

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Take this quiz to see if you are an empathetic person. I got Unicorn Goddess Empath.

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Am I an Empath? Take the test and find out!

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The definition of empathy

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Did you know?

Sympathy and empathy both refer to a caring response to the emotional state of another person, but a distinction between them is typically made: while sympathy is a feeling of sincere concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult or painful, empathy involves actively sharing in the emotional experience of the other person.

Sympathy has been in use since the 16th century, and its greater age is reflected in its wider breadth of meanings, including "a feeling of loyalty" and "unity or harmony in action or effect." It comes ultimately from the Greek sympathēs, meaning "having common feelings, sympathetic," which was formed from syn- ("with, together with") and páthos, "experience, misfortune, emotion, condition." Empathy was modeled on sympathy; it was coined in the early 20th century as a translation of the German Einfühlung ("feeling-in" or "feeling into"). First applied in contexts of philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology, empathy continues to have technical use in those fields that sympathy does not.

Did you know?

Compassion and empathy both refer to a caring response to someone else's distress. While empathy refers to an active sharing in the emotional experience of the other person, compassion adds to that emotional experience a desire to alleviate the person's distress.

... the story of Nellie Bly, the first female investigative reporter, who not only demanded justice from powerful institutions, but also insisted on dignity and compassion for the most vulnerable citizens. - The Christian Science Monitor, 17 Aug. 2022

Blonde clearly wants us to feel for Norma Jeane, but it dwells on her pain so obsessively ... that the movie's empathy feels like another form of exploitation. - Justin Chang, NPR, 23 Sept. 2022

The distinction between compassion and empathy is frequently a topic of exploration.

By empathy I mean feeling the feelings of other people. So if you're in pain and I feel your pain-I am feeling empathy toward you. If you're being anxious, I pick up your anxiety. If you're sad and I pick up your sadness, I'm being empathetic. And that's different from compassion. Compassion means I give your concern weight, I value it. I care about you, but I don't necessarily pick up your feelings. ... [I]f I feel compassion for you, I'll be invigorated. I'll be happy and I'll try to make your life better. - Paul Bloom, quoted in Vox, 16 Jan. 2019

Compassion is a much older word; it's been part of the language since the 14th century, and comes ultimately from Latin com- and pati, meaning "to bear, suffer." Empathy is a 20th century coinage modeled on sympathy as a translation of the German Einfühlung ("feeling-in" or "feeling into"). It was first applied in contexts of philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology and continues to have technical use in those fields.

Example Sentences

He felt great His months spent researching prison life gave him greater empathy with the poor. empathy towards convicts.

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'empathy.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Word History

Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion - more at pathos

1909, in the meaning defined at sense 2

The first known use of empathy was in 1909

Dictionary Entries Near empathy

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Merriam-Webster unabridged

Challenging Words You Should Know

Often used to describe "the march of time," what does inexorable mean?

Can you make 12 words with 7 letters?

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the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit... See the full definition

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A book on empathy

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There is always that friend you can depend on

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This song tells the story of someone going through his lifetime and telling his story

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Lukas Graham - 7 Years [OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO]

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Modern Science is Realising the World is a Living Network

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One Earth, One Humanity, One Future, is a concept that has been conveyed by poets, philosophers and spiritual teachers throughout the ages. One of its most beautiful expressions is found in the celebrated speech attributed to Chief Seattle of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes of what is now the state of Washington in the north-west of the USA:

This we know:
all things are connected
like the blood
that unites one family...
Whatever befalls the earth,
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life;
he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself. - Chief Seattle

The concept of connectivity is widely accepted in science. Image by Annija Veldre.
Web of Life

The same idea is at the very core of the Earth Charter, that remarkable declaration of 16 fundamental principles to build a just, sustainable and peaceful world. The Preamble of the Earth Charter states:

We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future...We must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny.

The time-honoured notions of the web of life and the Earth community, or community of life, are fully consistent with a new conception of life that has emerged in science over the last 30 years.
The web of life means that we are all part of one Earth community.
A New Conception

The systems view of life is a new understanding about life on earth that is emerging at the forefront of contemporary science. The universe is no longer seen as a machine composed of elementary building blocks. It is a conception of life based on systemic thinking and some of the new concepts and mathematical techniques of complexity theory.

It allows us for the first time to integrate the biological, cognitive, and social dimensions of life. We have discovered that the material world is a network of inseparable patterns of relationships; that the planet as a whole is a living, self-regulating system.

The view of the human body as a machine and of the mind as a separate entity is being replaced by one that sees not only the brain, but also the immune system, the bodily tissues, and even each cell as a living, cognitive system.
The systems view of life integrates the biological, cognitive, and social aspects.
The Systems View

Evolution is no longer seen as a competitive struggle for existence, but rather as a cooperative dance in which creativity and the constant emergence of novelty are the driving forces. And with the new emphasis on complexity, networks, and patterns of organisation, a new science of qualities is slowly emerging.

I call this new science "the systems view of life" because it involves a new kind of thinking - thinking in terms of relationships, patterns and context.

I call this new science "the systems view of life" because it involves a new kind of thinking - thinking in terms of relationships, patterns and context. In science, this way of thinking is known as "systems thinking", or "systemic thinking". Thinking in terms of relationships is crucial for ecology, because ecology - derived from the Greek oikos, meaning "household" - is the science of the relationships among various members of the Earth Household.
Systemic thinking involves looking at life in terms of relationships, patterns and context.
Living Networks

One of the most important insights of the systemic understanding of life is the recognition that networks are the basic pattern of organisation of all living systems. Ecosystems are understood in terms of food webs (i.e. networks of organisms); organisms are networks of cells, organs and organ systems; and cells are networks of molecules.

The network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks. Indeed, at the very heart of the change of paradigm from the mechanistic to the systemic view of life we find a fundamental change of metaphor: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network.

Closer examination of these living networks has shown that their key characteristic is that they are self-generating. In a cell, for example, all the biological structures - the proteins, the enzymes, the DNA, the cell membrane, and so on - are continually produced, repaired and regenerated by the cellular network. Similarly, at the level of a multicellular organism, the bodily cells are continually regenerated and recycled by the organism's metabolic network.
Networks are recognised as the basic pattern of organisation of all living systems.
Communication Processes

Living networks continually create or recreate themselves by transforming or replacing their components. In this way they undergo continual structural changes while preserving their web-like patterns of organisation. This coexistence of stability and change is indeed one of the key characteristics of life.

Each communication creates thoughts and meaning, which give rise to further communications, and thus the entire network generates itself.

Life in the social realm can also be understood in terms of networks, but here we are not dealing with chemical processes: we are dealing with processes of communication. Social networks, as you know, are networks of communications. Like biological networks, they are self-generating, but what they generate is mostly non-material. Each communication creates thoughts and meaning, which give rise to further communications, and thus the entire network generates itself.
Social networks generate thoughts and meaning to create communication patterns.
Mind and Consciousness

One of the most important, and most radical, philosophical implications of the systems view of life is a new conception of the nature of mind and consciousness, which finally overcomes the Cartesian division between mind and matter that has haunted philosophers and scientists for centuries.

In the 17th century, René Descartes based his view on the fundamental division between two independent and separate realms - that of mind, which he called the "thinking thing" (res cogitans), and that of matter, the "extended thing" (res extensa).

Following Descartes, scientists and philosophers continued to think of the mind as some intangible entity and were unable to imagine how this "thinking thing" is related to the body. The decisive advance of the systems view of life has been to abandon the Cartesian view of mind as a "thing", and to realise that mind and consciousness are not things, but processes.
The mind and consciousness are processes, not things.
The Process of Knowing

This novel concept of mind was developed during the 1960s by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who used the term 'mental process', and independently by the biologist Humberto Maturana. Their central insight is the identification of cognition, the process of knowing, with the process of life.

Cognition, according to Maturana, is the activity involved in the self-generation and self-perpetuation of living networks. In other words, cognition is the very process of life. The self-organising activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism - plant, animal or human - with its environment are cognitive interactions. Thus life and cognition are inseparably connected.

Mind - or, more accurately, mental activity - is immanent in matter at all levels of life. For the first time, we have a scientific theory that unifies mind, matter and life.
The systematic view of life brings together mind, matter and life.
Systemic Problems - Systemic Solutions

I want to emphasise that my synthesis of the systems view of life is not only theory, but that it has very concrete applications. We can use the systems view of life for dealing with the problems of our multifaceted global crisis.

Today, it is becoming more and more evident that none of these problems - energy, environment, climate change, economic inequality, violence and war - can be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are all interconnected and interdependent. As Pope Francis puts it in his remarkable encyclical Laudato si':

Our common home is falling into serious disrepair... [This is] evident in large-scale natural disasters as well as social and even financial crises, for the world's problems cannot be analyzed or explained in isolation... It cannot be emphasized enough how everything is interconnected.

These systemic problems require corresponding systemic solutions - solutions that do not solve any problem in isolation, but deal with it within the context of other related problems. Systemic solutions, therefore, tend to solve several problems simultaneously, whereas systemic problems have harmful consequences in several different areas.
Global problems are not isolated and require a more systematic approach.
The Connectedness of Global Issues

Let me take agriculture as an example. If we changed from our chemical, large-scale industrial agriculture to organic, community-oriented, sustainable farming, this would contribute significantly to solving three of our biggest problems:

It would greatly reduce our energy dependence, because we are now using one fifth of our fossil fuels to grow and process food.

The healthy, organically grown food would hugely improve public health, because many chronic diseases - heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and so on - are linked to our diet.

Organic farming would contribute significantly to alleviating climate change, because an organic soil is a carbon-rich soil, which means that it draws CO2 from the atmosphere and locks it up in organic matter.

Changing one global issue has an impact on other related problems.
Where to Now

This is just one example of a systemic solution. Over the last few decades, the research institutes and centres of learning of the global civil society have developed and proposed hundreds of such systemic solutions all over the world.

Resurgence has been at the forefront of documenting and discussing these solutions for the last 50 years with the unique blend of science, art, philosophy, spirituality and activism that has become its hallmark.

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One Earth, One Humanity, One Future, is a concept that has been conveyed by poets, philosophers and spiritual teachers throughout the ages. One of its most beautiful expressions is found in the celebrated speech attributed to Chief Seattle of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes of what is now the state of Washington in the north-west of the USA: This we know: all things are connected like the blood that unites one family...

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Animals that are empathetic

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Many people assume that animals act purely on instinct and don't have the emotional knowledge that humans do. In fact, even many animal lovers don't give certain animals credit for understanding emotions.

Yet the truth is that a lot of animals not only feel emotions, but they can display empathy towards each other as well. These 10 animals prove that there's more to them than meets the eye!

...Kat apologized through sign language, then signed "my baby died." After a long, silent moment in which Washoe stared at Kat, Washoe signed "cry" and mimicked a tear by running her finger down Kat's cheek.

...His long absence didn't stop two entire elephant herds from mourning him like he was one of their own, however. They traveled for 12 hours to his home, and stayed there for two days to continue mourning before traveling back home.

The lions attacked the men and chased them away, then they waited with the girl for 12 hours just in case the men returned. The pride went back home after the girl's family finally found her.

Sadly, All Ball was hit by a car and killed after sneaking out of the facility. After learning the news from researchers, Koko refused to interact in any way for 10 minutes before whimpering, which is how gorillas cry. "Sleep, cat," she signed later.

Interestingly, the experiment worked the other way around with humans, with 87% of people pulling the lever all the way to a part marked "Danger! Severe Shock!" even as they heard people in the other room scream. This was all for just a small amount of money.

The remarkable intelligence and sensitivity of certain animals never ceases to impress. I've met a number of humans that can stand to learn a lesson or two from these empathetic animals!

Share these amazing animals with your friends below!

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10 Times Animals Showed Us Just How Much They Really Care

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Many people assume that animals act purely on instinct and don't have the emotional knowledge that humans do. In fact, even many animal lovers don't give certain animals credit for understanding emotions. Yet the truth is that a lot of animals not only feel emotions, but they can display empathy towards each other as well.

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Scholarly article on empathy

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A meme on connection

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Memoirs are usually told in first person and are based on true factual events about that person

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Apology for Empathy by Mary Havran

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How shall I apologize for such, my indiscretions?
Overwhelmed as I often find myself
accomplice to my imperfections
Yes, I confess
my tendency to leap before I look
and nonetheless
with indifference
some hasty bounds I took
I am at times a willing slave
to my own emotions (cruel masters, some profess)
Jumping to such commands as these gave
heedless of consequence recklessness draws thence

Shall I protest, pleading some innocence
owing to personal failing
or being raised by chance
subject to humanity's entrance
prone to incense at others' misfortunate wailing
Though advised to place restrain
on my affinity for the underling
somehow I deign allow empathy free reign
over so many an undertaking

So drag me off to dungeon deep
or whip me beyond mercy
By this, my sin, may some angels weep
my shame displayed that others see
Fear not to make, of me, such sample
proving where end, for action, meets amend
My humiliation might stand as an example

Yet I would do it all again
without hesitating for even a minute
I would intervene at another creature's pain
were none save a like remorseful accede
the only result, for me, there in it
Yea, though discretion, over valor, indeed
may prove the better part
let it never transpire I choose such need
over acting from my heart

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Apology For Empathy Poem by Mary Havran - Poem Hunter

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How shall I apologize for such, my indiscretions?

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A scene from the movie "Big Hero 6" where Baymax hugs Hiro

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Quote on empathy

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One of my my favourite movies is My Family/Mi Familia. Which tells a story of a Mexican man and woman raising a family together, and it follows through all the way till the last child has a son. Beautiful movie, great stories.

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A little something from tumblr

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All of these different coloured ropes are connected