“There’s power in stories.” – Varric Tethras
I’m a bit of an oddball. Always have been. But I’m not ashamed of that fact. It makes life more interesting for me. I like to imagine it makes me enigmatic as well, but that’s probably just me indulging my not inconsiderable ego.
The point, however, is this: I’ve got some unusual ways of looking at the world.
For instance, if you asked everyone on the planet about the meaning of life, what do you suppose the answers would be? They would be far-ranging, but I think we could expect a dozen or so common themes around which the majority of people’s answers would cluster. We’d hear about love and service to others, adventure, experience, survival, proving your worth and living simply. We would most certainly run into people who believe life was about serving God, just as we would discover that many people believe life has no purpose at all.
But me? I think everyone is wrong. And I think everyone is right. Because I believe the meaning of life is all of these things. It just depends on what story is being told.
The purpose of this website is the same as that of life. Story. In the end, everything comes back to story. Everything about human existence concerns and hinges on narrative. Each individual life is a story, every day is a story, every activity, every event. That’s what history is – stories that last. Even religion is made of stories, the ones that inspire or motivate us to be better. Stories are all around us, in everything we do. Life, after all, is just one vast saga. We’re all characters, and we each have a part to play. It’s all about stories with us, and, in the words of expert storyteller Varric Tethras, there’s power in stories.
That’s why storytellers do what we do.
The careers of all storytellers – authors, filmmakers, playwrights, video game developers, even songwriters – are built on the assumption that stories are powerful. That stories change people. They challenge us to grow and explore, to look at the world in new ways. They cause us to re-evaluate the world and our place in it. Research is beginning to suggest what storytellers have known for eons: that stories affect how we think, how we perceive life and the world around us, and, by extension, the way we act. But we don’t really need new research to tell us that, do we? The evidence is around us in daily life, and it is apparent in even the most cursory glance through the past. Stories have proven throughout human history to be far more than just art or entertainment. They are often radical agents of change. To demonstrate this, I could cite a number of stories from any one of the major religions in the world, but that seems a bit too obvious. How about The Illiad? Homer’s epic influenced generations of Greek tradition which ultimately, in turn, affected every aspect of western civilization. It also kept in place a Greek warrior ethos that radically reshaped the world through the actions of Alexander the Great. (Funnily enough, Alexander was not Greek, but the Macedonians of his time adored Greek culture and emulated it in almost every way.) Alexander was raised on The Illiad. He was greatly inspired by the ethos it espoused, and he believed himself to be a continuation of its epic. A new Achilles for a later age.
Where would the world be now if not for The Illiad’s influence on one of the great shapers of history? Somewhere very different, that is certain. This is just one example out of thousands, tens of thousands, of examples that could be used. Stories are powerful; the world in which we live has been shaped by story as much as man.
So, have I gotten my point across? Are stories powerful, or am I just a ranting lunatic? (The latter is very probable.) If you agree that stories have almost unlimited influence in our lives, then I invite you to subscribe for more posts. I’m going to try to get some discussion flowing in the future, that way you don’t have to read only one person’s highly biased opinion. After all, the internal and external conversations brought about by stories are what unleash their change-creating potential!
Dakota Kemp 