Our stories connect us to the next generation

​Yesterday, the boys and I went to see the re-release of ET. I saw plenty of movies as a kid, but ET will always feel like the first movie I ever saw.

When I left the theater after seeing ET for the first time forty years ago, I felt something I'd never felt from a movie before.

I felt drawn into the connection between Elliott and ET. There was something about the love they shared. It felt alien, for sure, but yet real enough to leave me wondering if a love like that was possible.

I felt drawn into the wonder of a world that just might be bigger and holding on to more possibilities than I'd ever imagined.

I went to see that movie several consecutive weekends as a teen. There's a box in an attic somewhere full of ET memorabilia I began collecting soon after. After the movie yesterday, I told Elliott that I'd given him my stuffed ET toy from that collection when he was younger.

Ian said, "he still has it." We all laughed. But inside me there was something more meaningful than laughter taking place.

I joked with Elliott throughout the movie - almost every time one of the characters said "Elliott" - that he was actually named after the Elliott in the movie. And that it's no coincidence that his middle name is Thomas - thereby giving him the initials ET.

Elliott's names actually come from family members, but I do wonder if there was some subconscious influence going on there.....

While we waited for our pizza after the movie, we talked about all of this. I was reminded that what connects one generation to the next is the stories we tell. And not the words we use to recite them, but the emotions with which we tell them.

It's our emotions that connect us to our kids, and to one another. Our stories are simply the vehicle we deliver them with.

Sitting there, I told them I had no idea when I was sitting in that movie 40 years ago that it would ultimately become a connection between me and my own teens decades later. I had no idea that the emotions that movie was pouring into me would ultimately be poured into them.

I had no idea that 40 year old movie would bring a stuffed toy alive 40 years later. Sitting there, I could just imagine ET's heart light glowing bright in a corner of a bedroom.

And there was something powerful about imagining that light glowing long after I'm gone.

But it won't be a doll that carries on that light - and love. It will be a story.

A story that Steven Spielberg wrote, and ET told, and I heard and passed on to my sons - next generation.

We are born to be story tellers. It is our common love language. I do worry some days that we spend too much time trying to dictate stories instead of sharing in them. I do worry that we spend too much time trying to edit each other's scripts instead of being curious about the stories they already tell.

Because it's our stories that share the emotions that will ultimately connect us to the next generation.

Our stories, nobody else's.

So share your stories.