Why Stories??
A few of the stories at our house…
Think of all the stories we tell. Here are a few examples:
Parents of adult children telling stories of what their kids were like little
Relating your frustration at the auto repair shop to a coworker
Telling someone who missed the game about the last-second field goal try
Regaling your spouse over dinner with the tale of the day’s struggles
Gushing to friends about the dream vacation you just finished
Delighting the guys with details of how you took that buck last fall
Every terrible Ole and Lena joke ever imagined
Thirty seconds on the evening news about the war far away
While these stories may not be amazing works of art like Dostoevsky’s novels or Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, they are still of the same basic stuff. They’re narratives that include character, setting, plot, tension, and emotion. It seems like we are hard-wired to constantly tell stories. Why?
When you think about it, storytelling goes hand-in-hand with being human. We have a wonderful standard poodle who has more personality than a lot of people I know. She plays, mopes, hugs, works, and yearns. But she doesn’t tell stories, or even listen to them. Our granddaughter, on the other hand, at three years old is deeply fascinated by stories. Can’t get enough.
Seems like we use stories without even thinking about it as a way to process reality. Whether it’s a couple sitting over supper and answering the perennial question, “How was your day?” or a reader on the 300th page of Crime and Punishment, we use stories to make sense of the world around us.
We live in a constant stream of occurrences. Already on the Saturday morning while I’m writing this, the sun came up, the coffee maker finished its burbling, I kissed the horses on their noses before sending them out into the pasture, and a thousand other details. All these things happened around me. In my own mind, as I think about the details, I string them together in a way that makes sense. Maybe the unifying factor in the narrative is just that I choose what details happened to me.
Or maybe I realize that I am uncharacteristically chipper this morning, delighting and delighted in this new Saturday, and I’m wondering why I’m so cheerful. So to answer that question, I string together a narrative of occurrences and influences that work together to make me happy and hopeful. It’s the story that helps me make sense of reality.
This is probably the most ancient thing we do. From the earliest times, humans have told stories. If you imagine a group of humans who never shared a narrative, they’re probably living at an animal level. Stories told and heard push us to be compassionate, courageous, and maybe even wise. They tell us who we are, and what it all means.
I’m thinking about this today because Altered Vows is available for preorder, and I’m wondering about the whole process of writing, refining, and producing this book. Why am I doing it? Even as I ask the question, I’m holding in my mind the whole story of how the book has developed, how others have reacted to the story, and what it means to me.
See? I’m telling myself a story.