Why Stories Matter

I love stories. It's the reason I love what I do--I immerse myself in narrative. And I believe stories matter. A great deal. And I don't just mean fictional narrative (although there's nothing better than curling up with a big fat novel on a rainy day in a comfy armchair with a warm mug of tea), I mean stories that we tell each other. Stories can be instructive, they can warn us, but they can also give us hope and inspiration.

I was listening to an NPR program about a lawyer who did some pro bono work for the family of the Virginia Tech shooter. As you can imagine, this family was in shock and grief and pain, and they wanted to figure out a way to reach out to the world and apologize for the actions of their son. And this attorney helped them convey this message--of the deepest sorrow and mourning--of darkness neverending--that they were so sorry for what their son had done and would be grieving until the end of their days. And the attorney said that his office received thousands of messages from around the world--messages of kindness and empathy, reaching out to the family in their grief, and the attorney's voice as he was talking about it, started to choke up and he said that he was overwhelmed at the kindness--that he didn't realize how kind people could be.

I sat in my car mesmerized by his story. Because in the face of such devastating tragedy and horror, there was also this story. A story about a family in grief and people responding with kindness instead of anger and retribution.

And I know that life isn't that simple (as the inner cynic is quick to remind me), but I also know that stories matter. The stories we share with one another, the ones we read, the ones we watch--they matter tremendously.

So on that note, I'm going to leave you with a paragraph from a novel I enjoy quite a bit, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. It's probably my favorite paragraph in the English language--it is a paragraph that I love so much, I wish I had the genius to write such a sentiment, because it feels so true.

"It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you life in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic."
--Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (218-219)