We Are Stories
When I was doing my English studies, one of the ideas taught to us was that, we use metaphors to express most things in our lives.
After a brief Google search I found that Haruki Murakami also said ‘Everything in life is metaphor…’ and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said ‘All that is transitory is but a metaphor.’
I did not know these quotes when I started thinking about this post, I just had in my mind this sentence ‘Everything is a story.’ and that reminded me of the sentence taught to us in school that ‘Everything is metaphor.’
I was thinking that almost all our conversations are stories, the events in our lives, our past, or hopes for the future, the books we read, the movies we watch, all of them are stories.
We are stories for other people, other people are stories for us. Our days, months or years are stories. Our happy moments and our sad ones.
We are stories.
And, because of that, stories have power.
It can be inspirational stories which make us want to be better, it can be entertaining stories that help us escape a gloomy present and find relief, it can be scary stories that teach us about the perils of existence.
There is a story in everything and stories can help make us.
When I was very young I had difficulties understanding mathematical concepts, but in Romania, at that time, to go to high-school you needed to pass two exams, Maths and Romanian language.
Sadly for me my Maths grades were disastrous and it looked like I will not be able to go to high-school because of it. My mom, determined to give me the best chance possible, searched in our small town for a Maths teacher that could help, and she found one.
I started going, once a week, to learn from a lady that taught in a different school than mine. After chatting a bit with me she seemed to understand something I did not know at the time, that I take longer than others to understand mathematical concepts, so she did something quite extraordinary.
She started explaining Maths to me as if it were a story. We worked together like that for a few good months and, when it came to the exam, I managed to pass it with the lowest grade acceptable, but I did pass it and that changed my life, as from then on I only went to schools that did not require Maths, so I could survive them on my own.
An example of when using stories as a teaching aid literally changed my life.
Sadly, in our day and age, when social media is the biggest creator of stories, it is so easy to be confused between what is a good story or a bad one. A lot of the things we see online are smoke and mirrors stories and it is so difficult to distinguish the good from the evil.
The world seems to have a complexity we might not be fully prepared to comprehend and handle. Things have evolved so fast that I am not sure we have developed the human skills to cope with them. Not all of us anyways.
Stories are such a wonderful part of our lives that I am always thrilled to discover new ones I had no idea about.
Yesterday, we were walking about and went into a tiny, small town bookshop. Crowded, lovely smelling, minuscule bookshop. While looking around I found a book of fairy tales, or folk tales, written by Herman Hesse. I did not know he had written short stories and as I am a fan of short stories and like Herman Hesse I was instantly drawn to it.
I bought it and reading the Afterword I found out that these are literary fairy tales or folk tales, and that Hesse wrote them throughout his life.
Such a wonderful read! And such a pleasant surprise!
I love discovering stories like these that make me love even more the short story as a means of expression.
I had the same feelings about Property: A Collection, a book of short stories by Lionel Shriver. I had no idea she wrote short stories until I stumbled upon it in a charity shop.
The more stories I read, the more I understand that they have a particular type of power of supporting us and building us up.
Stories, real or made up, are the fabric of our reality and as our reality is perception, we need to be mindful of the stories we tell ourselves.