The Importance of Meaning and Purpose

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Carly Regal: You've written 10 books before this, you have one coming out now. How did you come to write this one? "I always sort of felt like my family story was an obligation in some ways for me to write" The book is a memoir not just spoken as a 12 year old, but from the perspective of a 12-year-old. It begins with a young man trying to explain what he did last summer and it's why we were refugees because his mother had a photo on her head.

Do the stories we tell about ourselves have the power to change us? Our guest today says they can.

To wrap up our season on meaning and purpose, we talk with author Daniel Nayeri. In his award-winning young adult novel, Everything Sad is Untrue, Daniel writes from the perspective of his twelve-year-old self, sharing the story of how he, his sister, and his mother immigrated from Iran to Edmond, Oklahoma, after his mother’s conversion from Islam to Christianity. Although this immigration kept his family out of prison (or worse), life in the U.S. came at a cost, too. Through his storytelling, Daniel also processes what he left behind: his beloved stuffed animal ("Mr. Sheep Sheep"), a life of comfort in Iran, and his larger-than-life father.

In this episode, we explore finding meaning through storytelling, the impact of an active imagination, and how the sustaining hope of the Christian story makes even a refugee camp in the Italian countryside a place of opportunity and joy.