Episode 02: My Journey 

“But this story, my story, did not begin with a clear sense of purpose. It began with disruption. With dislocation. With a moment when everything I thought was certain suddenly wasn’t. To understand where I stand today, I need to go back to the moment when everything changed.” 

From the Story I Live to the Journey That Shaped It 
Last time, I shared how my work isn’t just what I do—it’s who I am. But every story has an origin. Mine began with disruption. 
At 16, everything familiar vanished overnight. Uprooted. Disoriented. Struggling to make sense of who I was in a world that had shifted beneath my feet. That was when I first felt what happens when a narrative fractures—when the story no longer works. 
What I didn’t know then? That moment wasn’t an ending. It was the beginning of everything. 
In my next post, I take you back to My Journey. Not just my past—but how disruption, when reframed, becomes the catalyst for transformation. 
#Credocracy #StrategicNarrativeDesign #Leadership #Transformation #StoryThatWorks 
 
My Journey 
A life uprooted. A story rewritten. This is the journey that led me to a realization: belief governs action, and stories shape belief. 

Disruption 
In the spring of 1977, life as I knew it came to an abrupt end. My father, who worked for an international pharmaceutical company, came home one day and announced that he was being stationed in Athens. We were leaving in September. Just like that, everything changed. We packed our bags, shipped our belongings by boat—which meant we would live out of suitcases for months—and said goodbye to friends. At 16, I had just fallen in love for the first time, but being shy, I never found the courage to say anything. That love, nipped in the bud and like everything else, was left behind. 
The day we flew to Athens, first class, posh and pampered, I sobbed inconsolably the entire way. I had never felt so powerless, so devastated. When we arrived, our new house was empty. Our stuff, delayed by the sea journey, would take months to arrive. All I had was a single cassette tape: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. For the next three months, it played on repeat—a soundtrack to my disorientation and loss. 
Then came my first day at my new school, the American Community Schools of Athens. We were late in the school year, so my mother had to present me to the assistant principal, Mr. Bruce Hunt, for registration. Mr. Hunt was a tall man with a calm yet commanding presence. He looked at me kindly and said, “Mr. Ramzy, welcome to the American Community Schools of Athens. Here, we have a different system. You see, in this school, you are free. But freedom is like a rope—you can use it to hang yourself, or you can use it to climb to the top. The choice is yours. But remember, you are responsible for your actions and the consequences of your choices. Now, go out and do the right thing. And, son, I trust that you will.” 
That moment stunned me. No one had ever spoken to me like that. No one had ever given me such freedom, such choice—and with it, the trust and responsibility to shape my own future. 
Later that day, I found myself in English Literature class. The teacher introduced us to a poem that would change my life forever: Invictus by William Ernest Henley. As we dissected the poem, line by line, something inside me stirred. When we reached the final lines— “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul”—I felt an unexplainable surge of clarity and strength. In that moment, I made a vow: never again would I allow fear to hold me back. Never again would I let external circumstances define me. 

Battle 
This newfound sense of self didn’t come without disruption. The following year, in 1978, my father’s company decided to relocate us again—this time to Nigeria. My father refused; it was too dangerous. So, at the end of the school year, we returned to the Netherlands. If leaving my life behind once had been hard, doing it a second time was even harder. Moreover, the re-entry was brutal. My friends had moved on, and I no longer fit in. Worse, my Dutch school didn’t want me back. They didn’t recognize the American Community Schools as a legitimate education and found me too difficult to handle. 
After much insistence from my parents, the school finally relented—on one condition: I had to meet the passing criteria for every quarter, or I would be expelled. In the Dutch system, that meant scoring an average of 6 out of 10, which was achieved by rounding up from 5.5, which itself was rounded up from 5.45.  
And that is exactly what I did—for the next eight quarters, four semesters, and two years. I consistently scored an average of precisely 5.45. My teachers knew what I was doing. They understood the message I was sending. They were seething, but there was nothing they could do. 
On graduation day, one teacher handed me my diploma and said, “I’m quitting. I don’t want to be a teacher in a system where people like you can succeed.”  
I smiled and walked away. 

Two Systems 
What baffled me most was the stark contrast between the two systems. The American school had sent me back with a glowing letter of recommendation: “Ashraf is an A-student, kind, courteous, perceptive, intelligent, sensitive, independent, and enterprising.” Yet, in the Dutch system, I was considered a defiant, bothersome underachiever. It wasn’t that I was a different person—I was the same curious, eager-to-learn, kid, asking difficult questions. The difference was in how the two systems, in the 70’s, responded to that curiosity. In the Dutch system, my questions were seen as a threat and got shut down. In the American system, they were welcomed, even encouraged. 

Victory 
Ten years later, at a high school reunion, three of my old Dutch teachers approached me and apologized. When I asked why, they admitted, “You asked difficult questions we didn’t know how to answer, and we felt threatened. That’s why we punished you.” By contrast, when my American teachers couldn’t answer a question, they would say, “Good question, Mr. Ramzy. I don’t have the answer now, but I’ll find it for you by next week.” That experience taught me a vital lesson: systems rooted in fear suppress potential, while those rooted in trust unleash it. The one system promotes conformism and mediocrity. The other celebrates originality and excellence. 

Screenplay 
By the summer of 1982, I was searching for answers once again. I had dropped out of my psychology studies after two years. Psychology hadn’t provided the answers I was looking for. I wanted to understand life’s big questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? Why am I here? That summer, during a visit to my uncle in Los Angeles, I wandered into a bookstore on our last day there. I found myself standing in the “Film & Performing Arts” section, where my hand, as if it had a life of its own, reached for a book titled Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field. 
Just reading the title sent shockwaves through me. The idea that something as magical as a movie could have laws and principles that governed its structure and that you could actually study and learn them, well, that was mind-blowing. I flipped through the pages and found the answers to all the questions I had and more. And I had an epiphany: “Life’s a story. So, if I know how story works, then I’ll know how life works. And then, maybe, I’ll get my life in order”. Needless to say, I bought the book. And devoured it during the 10-hour flight back to Amsterdam, reading it five or six times. By the time we landed, I had made a vow: I would spend the rest of my life understanding and applying the power of story. 
 
Narratology 
Back in the Netherlands, a new department had just been established at the Faculty of Literature: Film & Performing Arts. They offered a program called Narratology—the science of story. That was not coincidence! It felt like destiny. I enrolled and spent the next six years studying the narrative structure and mythology of the Hollywood film, digging deeply into the American Dream as a modern-day mythology. I had two research questions: what is the story Hollywood tells us and, how do they do it? My master’s thesis, a 300-page analysis, explored what Big Story Hollywood tells us and how they structure the stories that resonate universally, beyond culture and creed. 

The Coca-Cola Epiphany 
Then, in the middle of my research, in 1985, something remarkable happened. Coca-Cola announced it was changing its iconic formula. What followed was nothing short of a cultural revolt. People protested, marched, and even wrote to President Reagan. One comment, in particular, struck a chord: “You can’t change Coke. Coca-Cola is the American Dream in a bottle. And you don’t mess with that.” A few months later, Coca-Cola reintroduced the original formula, rebranded as Original Coke. The entire episode became known as the marketing blunder of the 20th century. 
Wow. There I was, deeply immersed in investigating what Big Story Hollywood is telling us, focusing on the American Dream in particular as the source of Hollywood Narrative Design, and then I read that Coca Cola is the American Dream in a bottle! Coca-Cola wasn’t just a beverage in a bottle, it was, quite literally, a message in a bottle. It was a modern mythology, a common belief and value system. A network of stories that give a society a shared frame of reference: a sense of self and of belonging, of purpose and of direction. People weren’t protesting the loss of a taste—they were protesting the loss of an identity, a collective story they had bought into. 
That’s when I had my second epiphany: 
"People don’t buy products; they buy stories. People don’t buy brands; they buy into the myths and archetypes those brands represent." 
This realization wasn’t just about marketing—it touched on something more fundamental. It revealed a profound truth about human nature: we don’t simply consume things—we seek meaning. We yearn for meaning. We ache for it. We seek identity, belonging, and purpose. The most successful brands don’t merely provide functional or emotional benefits; they invite, enable and inspire us to believe in something larger than ourselves. 

Symbolic Consumption 
I had stumbled upon a concept known as symbolic consumption: the idea that people don’t consume products solely for their practical benefits or emotional resonance but for the meaning they derive from them. In this case, it was quite literally the message in a bottle. Products become stories. Brands become myths. Successful brands don’t just sell things or tell stories—they offer symbols, identities, and values that people can attach themselves to.  
This insight opened up an entirely new horizon of possibilities for me. My personal quest for meaning and my academic exploration of narrative suddenly converged into something practical, useful, and valuable. The worlds of identity and purpose, story, character, and plot coalesced into a tangible reality: the world of marketing, branding, and advertising. 

The Power of Story 
Story isn’t just a tool for communication— at its core, it is how we make sense of our lives. It is how we give meaning and purpose to who we are, what we do, and where we’re going. Story opened up a whole new horizon of possibilities for me. It gave me a path to pursue.  
Apparently, I’m not alone in this search for meaning. We all have those big questions about identity, community, purpose and direction. Who am I? Where do I belong? Where do I go from here? 
We all want to know who we are, where we fit in, and how to navigate life’s complexities. At some point, we all lose our way, lose ourselves, and lose the plot. But through those struggles, we learn invaluable lessons. We learn who we are, what matters to us, and what we’re willing to stand for. 
We all long to be known, to be loved, to find our way home. And when we don’t, we suffer. But when we do, we rejoice. 
We’re all looking for answers. I know I still am. But over time, I’ve learned something even more vital: it’s not about always having the right answers—it’s about knowing which questions to ask. 
Because when we ask the right questions, we find our story. And when we find our story, we find our meaning.