The Stories We Tell

We tell stories. We tell stories about what happened at the grocery store. We tell stories about our kids, our parents, and our childhoods. We tell stories about wars and gods and creation; we tell stories to pass the time, to make a connection, and to try to find reason in the chaos. Everything we know and believe is a story someone told. We’ve done this since the dawn of time—and the “dawn of time” is a story we tell, too.

Then one day, we invented the camera, and we embraced it fully. We took pictures and incorporated them into our stories: “My mother was a beautiful woman; here is a photo of her.” Then we discovered we could make those pictures move, and the motion picture was born. Our hunger for a good story drove this innovation further and further.

I am no different than anyone else; I embrace these things as most do. I wonder about the cost, however.

The first time I saw a movie based on a book I had read, I was so disappointed. I already knew what the people looked like; I knew their world. I had lived with them and taken the same journey they did. Seeing it on screen made that world crumble. But it did something worse: it dulled my senses. It robbed me of the need to imagine.

The biggest challenge I face when communicating with my kids is encouraging them to express their thoughts. I struggle to get them to describe events or feelings in a meaningful way. I wonder if it’s because we’ve robbed them of the need to think—the need to explain. If so, we’ve robbed them of one of the most fundamental things that makes us human: the ability to tell a story, to paint a picture with words.