Seeing Story as a Mystery Box

I was talking with an African writer and professor recently at a meeting that we had some trouble scheduling. We met at my request to discuss a story idea that I was working on. Instead of getting to the point, this professor began to tell me stories of her family in Ghana, stories about her health and her problems with her insurance, and stories about her students. Because I was the one seeking her assistance, I began by being polite, puzzled, and struggled to be patient. When I attempted to bring the conversation around to the matter at hand, she would go off on another tangent. Finally I realized that her stories and her references were oblique, that I was required to listen actively enough to make the connection between what I had asked and what she was answering. The indirectness of her methods lent a unfamiliar pattern and a subtlety to our conversation which, when it finally wound around to the exact topic I had come to discuss, was the richer for it for I knew more about her and how she thinks. It made me realize how often in this culture we hurry toward what we think should be the point of the story, when wandering off track and having to reconcile the distance between where we are and where we were heading makes for a more complex and nuanced chaining of ideas. Listening to answers from directions we don't expect leaves us more room for discovery in stories, and opens us to the possibilities of mysterious connections.