It’s no big secret that I love stories. Even my website name (and most of my online identity) is as a shy-storyteller.
I always had a very personal relationship with stories. The desire to know what happens next kept me going when I was almost ready to give up.
But I never stopped to think about the stories themselves. Like the structure of the story or basically what is it in the story that connects with me in such a basic level.
Recently I have been reading a lot of books talking about stories and their structure. Like a true internet citizen, I always search the fascinating things I read about on YouTube. These searches led me to more books but it was a Ted Talk that captured my mind.
I promptly forgot most of the things explained in the talk. Just one line got stuck deep inside my mind. It said something like – we use stories not to escape reality but to navigate reality.
Now let me expand on the statement. It was basically talking about how we learn from fictional characters and situation to deal with real life. Like we would wonder what would happen if I did (or didn’t) do something like the character is doing in this particular story.
We all have a desire to know what happens next in our life as well. Do we do well in this exam? Is this our future life partner? Will we survive this pandemic? In short, we are all the protagonists in our own life’s story. We are all on our own Hero’s Journey. The stories we read or watch in movies or TV shows just helps us imagine what we would do if we were in such a situation.
Some fictional situations may become a reality and knowing those stories might actually help us. But even the fictional situations which never become a reality for us, still teach us valuable lessons. But more than that they let our creative mind flex its imagination muscle.
We all need this wonder in our life. We all need stories in our life.