I love a good story and I even spin some sometimes. I spin my words into storied spiderweb in order to share something that I see and catch the imagination of other people. I don’t mean fiction although I am determined, with some luck and time, to spin some of those as well.
What I mean is that everything we do, everything we get involved in becomes a story and there are no two stories alike. Stuff happens all the time. Things are done by us and things are done to us, yet how we view those things is as unique as a snowflake or a human fingerprint.
We’re people of stories. We tell stories of monsters in our daily newspaper. We report on weather that half the time doesn’t come. We see our addictions as inevitable curses, ones we will never break from no matter how hard we try. We are people of stories and I wonder why that is. Why do we have such a great imagination. An imagination that can imagine the worst and an imagination that can dream up amazing things we will forever stand in awe of.
Take music for example. There are only seven notes but with those notes we have created so much music, that it’s impossible to comprehend. Just think of the genres of music we’ve created in the last hundred years; jazz, blues, country, rock, heavy metal. And think of what other forms are taking shape because of the creation of the computer like Rap and Hip Hop. We continue to tell stories to the same seven notes, to the same mathematical rhythm of ancient time, but why?
Why are we people of stories. I think its because this is how we remember. In the finale of Games of Thrones there was an interesting philosophical discussion about life and death. Death forgets and life remembers.
We have life because we have memories and can spin stories. That is what being alive means. We have the power to spin whatever story we desire. We are able to recreate our lives over and over again. That is the difference between being alive and being dead. Yet so many people who are alive are simply dead because they have forgotten to be people of stories.
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