Why are stories so important in our lives?

We start our lives watching and listening to sounds made by the world around us. As William James once wrote “The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion”. At some stage, many of these sounds become words and acquire meaning and emotion. When these words get strung together, they become stories that can be described as “stores of information” that help us make sense of the world through shared experience. These shared experiences become our primary well of joy, suffering, pain and, in extreme cases, mental illnesses.

You wouldn’t have a life unless you had a story, for without a story, you wouldn’t be able to reflect on your life.

Before we started school, we were told tales of the world, our relatives and our ancestors. We were even told tales about ourselves and many people in their adult lives are still impacted by these “You’re a good girl and one day you will become a nurse…” and “You’re a lazy boy and will never amount to much” etc. stories. At some levels, these stories are similar to those used by brand managers to help market their products. Empowering stories help develop strong, empowered individuals and brands while dis empowering stories can debilitate, haunt and destroy us unless they are transformed..

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You’ve got to be carefully taught! Rodgers and Hamerstein, South Pacific Lyrics

Throughout our education we are told stories by teachers and lecturers about geography, history, science and so on. When we can repeat these stories in the way they were told to us, when we can use the same buzzwords and acronyms with a sense of confidence, we are considered to be educated.

Whatever we know about the world, whatever we know about ourselves is grounded in stories that we’ve been told or constructed ourselves. In either case, all stories are made up.

We tell stories to each other. We read stories in books and on the web. We watch movies and are interrupted by stories in pop-up and stealth advertising trying to grab our attention. These narratives inspire us to see the world in very particular ways and they also have the power to create or change our relationship to the relationships between things.

Stories can transform our friends into enemies and vice versa. Stories can make us dissatisfied with our lives to the extent that we even change our values, preferences and behaviours since stories that contain values both influence and create behaviours.

We tell stories to ourselves (some refer to this as thinking). And when we entertain these stories for long enough, they not only become the way we experience the world, they become how we create a unique world or “reality bubble” for ourselves.

Our use of language and accent create deep perceptions in others of who we are and where we’re going. Our stories determine and describe our “social status” and place in the grand scheme of things. A great story will get you the dream job and relationship while a lousy story will can get you the sum of all your fears, big trouble and an orange jumpsuit.

Storytelling is the biggest industry on the planet – it’s the way we store and share meaning and create knowledge. Each and every profession or skill in our world has it’s own jargon, acronyms and stories. Every organisation whether government, a corporation, a religion, a political party, a university or the corner shop is powered by it’s own stories about their foundation myths, their products and people.

Since stories are  so important in our lives and as they provide the fundamental experience of being human, we can inspire positive change in our lives by choosing to entertain, think about and retell those stories that inspire hope for a better present, past and future simply because these stories will form the heritage of future generations.

Views: 49