Stories are life.
They are necessary to understand something, to make sense of anything, to enjoy everything. And maybe that's why we love them so much. From the what-did-you-do-today? to the Man Booker Prize winner, stories are life themselves. Not a copy of life, not a retelling of life, not even a mirror image, but very life itself because life itself depends on our making sense of the world through stories.
Even the most data-oriented, number-loving scientist can only make sense of her world through narrative. Of course, there is reality. There are actual, factual, the-way-it-is, objective events. But I experience them only through my limited senses and assembling that information into a story that may or may not make much sense to me. My reality is unique, is subjective, and independently beautiful, tragic, or commonplace because it is subjective. And subjectivity requires patience and humility.
We exist in and as stories. We are deceived (believing one story) if we think that we just experience events and reality as they are. Evidence demands interpretation. Happenings beg for interaction.
Events do not have inherent significance. They only have significance in relationship to people and other events. Significance is assigned, determined. It doesn't come packaged with reality.
I'll never forget a certain undergraduate history professor cupping her words as she whispered, "There is no objectivity." There is no way to experience and unbiasedly interpret our reality. Reality is objective, but there is no objectivity.
And this is why we are all fiction writers. We are composing our stories everyday--stories not just of rigid schedules that record the events of life, but the grit and tears, the spit-takes and sweat of our experienced reality. We are assembling information and interpreting events in ways that are unique to us. This is why we all have stories--because we all exist and we all experience life according to our limitations, not in spite of them.
Fiction is not the dirty word or the literary genre you thought it was. It isn't untruth; it is simply the narrativizing of truth--the dreaming of what could be based on the what is and certainly has been. Fiction isn't deception; it is construction. It isn't lying; it's truth-creating. And, in it's life-producing actuality, it has such potential to be life giving!
Fiction isn't something we leave behind when we grow up or relegate to pleasure reading. Fiction is what we live for.
So, let's just embrace fiction life! Let's talk of things that could be. Let's dream of things that should be. Let's listen as we experience life and create it together. Let's makes stories together--making sense of our worlds--as we weave our events together and breathe this world in together. Let's rejoice in the maybes, and smile at the probably nots. Let's keep collecting data but remember that, as Brené Brown suggests, "Maybe stories are just data with a soul." Let's put some soul back in the grind of our day to day data. For here is a place for maybe-stories.
And here is a place for fiction.
They are necessary to understand something, to make sense of anything, to enjoy everything. And maybe that's why we love them so much. From the what-did-you-do-today? to the Man Booker Prize winner, stories are life themselves. Not a copy of life, not a retelling of life, not even a mirror image, but very life itself because life itself depends on our making sense of the world through stories.
Even the most data-oriented, number-loving scientist can only make sense of her world through narrative. Of course, there is reality. There are actual, factual, the-way-it-is, objective events. But I experience them only through my limited senses and assembling that information into a story that may or may not make much sense to me. My reality is unique, is subjective, and independently beautiful, tragic, or commonplace because it is subjective. And subjectivity requires patience and humility.
We exist in and as stories. We are deceived (believing one story) if we think that we just experience events and reality as they are. Evidence demands interpretation. Happenings beg for interaction.
Events do not have inherent significance. They only have significance in relationship to people and other events. Significance is assigned, determined. It doesn't come packaged with reality.
I'll never forget a certain undergraduate history professor cupping her words as she whispered, "There is no objectivity." There is no way to experience and unbiasedly interpret our reality. Reality is objective, but there is no objectivity.
And this is why we are all fiction writers. We are composing our stories everyday--stories not just of rigid schedules that record the events of life, but the grit and tears, the spit-takes and sweat of our experienced reality. We are assembling information and interpreting events in ways that are unique to us. This is why we all have stories--because we all exist and we all experience life according to our limitations, not in spite of them.
Fiction is not the dirty word or the literary genre you thought it was. It isn't untruth; it is simply the narrativizing of truth--the dreaming of what could be based on the what is and certainly has been. Fiction isn't deception; it is construction. It isn't lying; it's truth-creating. And, in it's life-producing actuality, it has such potential to be life giving!
Fiction isn't something we leave behind when we grow up or relegate to pleasure reading. Fiction is what we live for.
So, let's just embrace fiction life! Let's talk of things that could be. Let's dream of things that should be. Let's listen as we experience life and create it together. Let's makes stories together--making sense of our worlds--as we weave our events together and breathe this world in together. Let's rejoice in the maybes, and smile at the probably nots. Let's keep collecting data but remember that, as Brené Brown suggests, "Maybe stories are just data with a soul." Let's put some soul back in the grind of our day to day data. For here is a place for maybe-stories.
And here is a place for fiction.