We use stories for everything – it’s how we understand the world. 
We tell ourselves stories to explain what happens inside our heads – “I think I fell in love with her that day I saw her walk across the street in the rain.”
We tell ourselves stories to explain what happens inside our bodies – “As soon as I eat mushrooms I can feel the blood rush to my head.”
We tell ourselves stories to explain what happens outside us – “Everything was OK until the day he got that job and left for China.”
Even when we go crazy we invent new stories to explain the surreal world to ourselves. To others it may be hard to understand what we are thinking and doing but even so, regardless of how mad we really are, within us we are following a definite, coherent narrative that makes sense within it’s own world.
We work our way through the maze that is life because we narrate our lives to ourselves,
to each other,
out of the past,
into the future.
Coarse and delicate, soft and hard, terrifying, comforting, hopeful, black and white and grey and red and pain and flow and plans and hopes and kisses and tears and touches and blows and green and hot and then and then and then…
The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.
-Harold Goddard
On the other hand – narratives are important to understand what is going on within ourselves – and this process is pointing to deeper places and issues.
Oh, and thats the power of story telling…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3cl7Q2GI50
I think stories are vital for us at all levels – much more than we can even see.
Precisely.
How about telling stories without words ?
An experiment.
http://justpoems.org/2012/02/24/music/
Great post. I’ve just nominated you for the Kreativ Blogger Award. You can find the details by following this link. Congratulations – well deserved.
http://maturestudenthanginginthere.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/bang-that-gong-everyone/
Thanks, Jacqueline – that is very kind of you!
Very true….Stories shape our lives and if we are reading horror stories what a tragedy. We must silence the ego and step beyond the stories or else make darn sure they are love stories:) I really hope the world can get beyond this…Thank You….Visionkeeper
I don’t think we can really go beyond them but once we see that we have more control in our narratives than we may have first thought we can maybe we can take control of them rather than vice versa?
Lovely post.
Glad you enjoyed it.
And sometimes we are so caught up in the tales we create . . . that we lose touch with the world as it is.
True and sometimes they help us understand the world as it is, as well.
Our life does become the story we tell ourseles about it. What about the lives of others? Can we make them better by telling the right stories and sharing them?
I suspect we can but I’m not sure exactly how to do it.
some stories are meant to point us towards a happy ending, and some stories, I think, are simply a reflection of how we have interpreted certain events within our lives. Most stories have a beginning, middle, and end, so I like to think that the stories are still being written.
Stories are important to tell for they help us heal, share history and get creative… Love this post. 🙂
your post is a storying about your thoughts on stories. lovely. everything’s a story.