Story

Humans crave story. We seek it out in our sports matches, in our presidential elections, and in our love lives. Story is woven throughout the human experience, from the moment we are birthed we are part of something bigger than ourselves. There is something special and beautiful about that thought. From the very first time that humans gathered around a campfire to the silver screen of Hollywood today, humans have always told stories.

If you want to move the world all it takes is a good story. Just look around you, you are surrounded by them. This is because stories are not bound to just books and movies. I think of paintings as stories. Each stroke of a sketch is a part of a larger whole. The notes cascading throughout a melody are a journey. The products that we buy and the companies we purchase them from all emphasize their stories now. We use story to illustrate our thoughts, to learn new ideas. We use a story to explain to our children the social norms expected of them and we use them to reinforce what is expected of us as adults. We resonate with story. It captures something within us, something unnamed within our collective psyche. This allows the stories that we share to transcend the medium that they are captured on. They take on a life of their own, they grow and expand, and this is something that can be a double-edged sword at times.

What I experience when I read a book or watch a film is different than another person, even if they happen to be right next to me at the time. Each of us brings who we are to a story, interacting with it based on our beliefs and worldviews to create an experience unique to each of us. One of the largest fights I ever had with one of my besties was over a movie. He loved it, I kind of hated it. We had both seen the same film but we came away from it with very different (and very strong) opinions about it. We talked for hours about the plot and about the characters. Neither of us was wrong, nor were we right. We were both expressing what we had each experienced, filtered through our own backgrounds, and through our own stories. This exemplifies what I mean when I say that no two people experience exactly the same story, even though they may be reading the same words on the page. Because of who we are each of us can walk away from a story with very different impressions.

This ability to take on multiple meanings and mediums is one of the things I love the most about stories. Paintings. Songs. Books. Movies. Stories can be anything and can have multiple meanings far outside the original intent of the creator. Stories are much like dreams, ephemeral, transient things, that transform and move even as they are being put onto the page. This is why I am a storyteller. I want to bridge the gap between us, to give my audience something that they might love or even maybe hate, but at least they will talk about it. Remember it. And maybe be a little bit changed by it. This is the power of story.