Importance of Story

The world often does not make sense. Bad things happen to good people. The bad guys win in the end, or at least keep attaining positions of wealth and power.

Explosions, violence, natural disaster, poverty, disease and so much more.

It’s overwhelming.

I’m sure it was in the ancient days as well.

So a few clever people, long long ago, gathered around a campfire started telling stories. They told stories of mischievous spirits and petty gods that withheld the rain or cast fire from the heavens. Impish spirits, witches and vampires spoiled food, withered crops and made infants die in their cribs. Monsters lurked in the darkness, causing all of the senseless calamity that befalls humanity.

And they’re still there. Monsters still walk the Earth. Greed, Callousness, Divisiveness, Apathy, Cruelty, Selfishness, and Despair are some of the chief demons that prey upon the people of this world.

And thus we continue to write and tell stories. To make sense of it all.

Somewhere along the line we started believing that the higher powers were all supposed to be ‘good’, for causes we considered noble that we projected onto the heavens. But the ancients knew better. They knew that if there were gods in the sky and spirits in the air, that they were often malicious, because of all of the sundry awfulness that could and did befall a person.

We may even craft narratives within our own history and our own lives. I have seen people craft narratives around themselves to explain their life from the point of view that they prefer, and hone out anything that threatens their version of the story. It’s neurotic and unhealthy, but it a form of story telling.

Others have began crafting grand adventures in table top and video games where we are the central 

character fighting our way through horrific circumstance and overwhelming odds.

But at the end of it, we tell these stories to entertain, but furthermore to engage our weary, damaged souls. Stories remind us of the importance of our own humanity, of the strength of love, the need for courage, the importance of integrity and honor in a world that does not reward such things.

So, thousands of years later, story is just as important as it was when told and painted in the flickering fire light on cave walls back in the beginning of our story of humanity.

Our stories will outlive us. After our death, it will be the stories of our lives and deeds that carry on after we are gone.

It may be with dragons and wizards and aliens that we make our own campaign, or story or blog or game that makes sense of the strangeness and strife of our own existence.

To tell, write, share and absorb these stories that exist as tiny windows of light into the human soul that pour out a little hope, wonder, mirth and affirmative energy into this world, is the greatest gift we can share as we each try in our own ways to combat the tumult of this world.

So rise forth against angry gods, horrifying monsters, wicked spirits and other malicious things that go bump in the night, with your verve, your conviction, your deeds, your spirit and your story.