The Storytelling Animal

When I was a little girl, I was fascinated by fairy tales. I worried when Snow White ate the poision apple, cheered by the time that she wake up after being kissed by Prince Charming, cried when Cinderella abused by her stepmother, and laughed when she was found by Prince holding her crystal shoe. Those stories gave that litter girl a vision of wonderful furture since all of them end with a 'Happily ever after'.

Does my story sound familar to you? It's a childhood for all of us, I mean, for the girls, and some other stories for boys. We crave for stories, they show us the good from the bad, and they are also pleasurable because they allow us to escape. Life is hard, Neverland is easy, and we know heros always beat villan in a fiction, it encourages us to behave well.

If you've read the book named 'Brief History of Humankind', you may be impressed by the content in the book, 'The social unit can be maintained by gossip is 150 people, and if there's more, it need stories, no matter religious stories, or nationalism stories, or even company vision.' I found it reasonable and wisdom since it reminds me of Christian, The Bible is full of stories about Jesus, and many big companies have their own brand stories, such as Starbucks built its empire by providing that thirdplace--the comfortable location between home and the office and how Apple challenges the status quo.

Stories is a also form of social glue that brings people together around common values. I used to read a book named 'Theory U', it's a deep theory to me and I confuse about the 'Presencing' (Presencing is a blended word combining “sensing” (feeling the future possibility) and “presence” (the state of being in the present moment)). It's the most important part in 'U' and I have no idea what happened or would happen for the inversion. Then the author tells a story, just like a magic to make time stand still, people keep silence but understanding that everyone is exactly on the same page and feel the Presencing. It;s the story homogenizes them, and make them the one.

While stories don't always give a bright sight on us if you've ever heard of the 911 Conspiracy, how Indian believe AIDS is a racist hoax designed to terrify black people, and how the terrorstic organization used stories to manipulate people. And even sometimes our mind may tell us stories to distort our memories, we vividly remember the big and traumativ moments of our lives, but details of these memories can't be trusted. That's why the author of the book 'The night of the Gun' says 'People remember what they can live with more often than how they lived'.

The way the stories are working on us all the time, reshaping us in the way that flowing water gradually reshapes a rock. Do you have any stories impressed you a lot? Is there any story in your life that changed your life path? On Jan 23th, please come by and share us your stories.