Tuesday 23 September 2014

Stories are important

Stories are important.

When we're learning to process thoughts and words in the first place, we learn through stories. When we're learning right and wrong, we learn through stories.

They form us and they inform us.

And when we're children, as any parent knows, we cling to our stories and we want to hear them again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and...

When we grow up, we start to create our own stories. We cast ourselves as the main characters and we craft our own story as we live our life. We sometimes spend a long time trying to work out who that character is. But we keep on with the stories anyway.

Sometimes, we tell stories about other people. Sometimes, we realise we're part of someone else's story. Sometimes we realise there are more stories than we can count.

And in the meantime, we tell each other stories. We speak them. We write them.

Funny stories. Sad stories. Personal stories. Scary stories. Bad stories. Good stories. Exciting stories. Beautiful stories.

We go and watch stories. We buy books so we can read stories. And we use technology to find new stories. We read stories in new ways. We listen to stories and we want our stories to be listened to.

We learn about each other through stories. We learn about the world with stories.

We start off making sense of life with stories and we end up making sense of our lives with stories.