Mind Moves: 'What's the story?" is the extraordinarily open, apt invitation issued by young people to each other when they phone or meet.
It is the opening gambit, the obligatory conversational intro. It is an invitation to recount new tales, to update the "story" since the last communication, to share facts, to provide more information, to clarify situations, to offer a new or different version of events or even to make future plans.
Yes, "what's the story?" can also mean, where are we going, what are we doing, who else will be there? It asks everything and nothing and is an ingenious and generous mode of address.
"What's the story?" is a term which recognises the degree to which our lives past, present and future depend upon the stories told about us, and those that we tell about ourselves. It understands that there may be inaccuracies in descriptions that every person has a right to amend.
In families, people may be described in ways that they then feel obliged to demonstrate: the responsible one, the intelligent one, the sporty, the academic, the pretty, the funny, the helpful one. The burden of role assignments is understood by adolescents who try to remedy that load by allowing each other to give their own version of themselves and of their world.
"What's the story?" may be entirely without referent, in that people who have not met each other for some time can issue this invitation, to which the respondent may reply either in single syllables or entire narratives.
It is a broad query rather than an intrusive specific question. It is kind. It does not ask the other person to supply factual answers in a particular domain or to "tell" about themselves beyond their own wish to convey personal information. In this regard it differs from many questions posed by adults, which often focus on investigation of activities or evidence of achievement.
Of course, among young people "what's the story?" may sometimes be context bound. For example, when there is trouble afoot with parents, "what's the story?" may mean; "are your parents still being difficult?" or "are you allowed out tonight?". The generality of the question protects both parties to the conversation from having to ask or answer in a manner comprehensible to eavesdropping parents at either end of the phone.
The origin of this adolescent-constructed colloquialism is unknown. It may be an extension of "howaya" or the urban version of "how's the craic?", a disadvantaged term given the other "substantial" meaning of "craic" internationally. Or its source may be the power of the "scéal" or story, an atavistic affinity with "seanchas", that story-telling tradition which recognises the significance of the spoken word in mediating culture and negotiating life.
Whatever its origin, asking "what's the story?" is further evidence of the artistry of day-to-day communication and confirmation of the cultural continuity of storytelling as a knowledge base and healing mechanism. Within psychology and psychotherapy, the proliferation of narrative therapies, including the work of Bettelheim, Mair, Jung, Erikson and White, highlight the story as a means of authoring lives.
Modern research on this ancient ritual is an extensive exegesis of biblical stories, epic narratives, informative parables, folktales, myths, legends, fables and fairytales.
Crucial to the emotional development of young people, therefore, is the experience of listening to stories, thereby understanding the universality of emotions and the collective experience of living.
Anyone who has read the life of Hans Christian Andersen will recognise that stories were the means by which he coped. He needed their imaginative transformative power. He needed to believe there is happiness after suffering, outer ugliness conceals inner beauty, eyes can never die, death is a transition, being bullied, being different can be overcome, adventures await, the defeated triumph, the impossible is possible. His stories invite us into a world in which the ordinary is magical and magic is ordinary; a world available to every generation beginning with "once upon a time".
But what if we lost his stories? What if an Evil Spirit Woman was to launch a computer virus in a bid to destroy our favourite fairytales and endanger the Ugly Duckling, the Elves and the Shoemaker. And what if two Dublin teenagers, Freya and Finbar, found themselves having to save all Hans Christian Anderson's characters from obliteration? Such an adventure is the stuff of a new four-part series, Finding Hans commissioned by RTÉ Radio Drama to commemorate the bicentenary of Hans Christian Andersen's birth.
Unlike visual presentations, listening allows people to close their eyes, conjure up their own images of characters and events, to discriminate between the diverse voices, to focus on the plot as it unfolds and to anticipate the outcome.
This series will provide parents with an opportunity to understand the personal and emotional resonance these stories may have for their children, through planned shared weekly parent-child engagement with fairytales from both their childhoods and the new story they will hear together.
• Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview.
• Finding Hans begins on Saturday at 6.05pm on RTÉ Radio 1.