Addicted to Stories

As reasonably conscious, theoretically sentient, possibly human beings, we are addicted to stories, be that myth, mono-myth, or the sad lies we tell ourselves each day.

It’s about the “story,” that narrative thread, which, like me, binds us together.

I did a short stint as a volunteer tour guide, because “Docent” sounds too classy, although the term fits, so I did that short stint, starting one fall, dropping out after the spring arrived and I wasn’t comfortable wearing long pants in the heat, but I learned something, repeating the material over and over on the various afternoons.

The trick was to have a narrative thread, not just the items in the display, but a story, plot, descriptions that matched meaning to the tour.

So like this, like that tour I can no longer perform, it helps to have a story.

In a similar way of looking at it, when I land on a new web page, if the headline and header don’t tell me enough, the first place I’ll click is the “About” page. Bio/back-story/plot to what the data is about. Structure and meaning, and that structure and meaning, for me, is delivered via a story.

One text about England’s War of the Roses, straight up narrative of history, I read that because I’ve been sifting through Shakespeare’s history plays. As much as I love the poetry, truth be told, much of Shakespeare’s “History” is self-aggrandizing revisionist material, designed, often as not, to help perpetuate a single goal that might — or might not — have anything to do with the history.

Still, it’s about being addicted to stories.

#stories