Why We Need Stories

We need stories because more than anything they tell us who we are,

and who we can be.

Fiction is so much more then escapism. Stories split our minds wide open, and the imaginations that were damned up when we became adults and swallowed the lie that being  mature means being a “realist.”

When we choose stories, we enter new worlds, somewhere over the rainbow,  and we begin to understand our world.

We meet characters and if we let them they became our friends.

They remind us we are not alone. That each human life means something.

They help us know ourselves, indeed, they are a reflection of ourselves, pieced together with parts of the old woman who lives next door and stares longingly at her driveway, and our Uncle Fred with crooked teeth and sparkling eyes who speaks of things way above your head.

Stories. All of us are living one. Breathing one. We all want to get lost in a good one, suspend belief for a moment. Maybe what we really want is to live in a way where we suspend belief about our own lives,

I can’t believe I get to do this,
that I get to live like this
I get to be who I am.
That after years of self loathing I can love me.

Our stories reflect what we long for.

What makes a hero?

Who is prince charming?

How to recognize the face of our real enemy,

our Real Savior.

Beauty on the other side of pain.

What adventure looks like.

Stories, in essence, tell the gospel.  They reflect grace and love and redemption that we can’t always see in our world.

But stories help us see what we have,
what’s in the people around us, in ourselves.

Stories help us resurrect beliefs we let die with childhood.

Magic.

A band of friends, journeying to find answers, to save the world, to understand what it means to live.

Overcoming obstacles, especially fear.

Choosing action over sitting on our couch any day, Carpe Diem.

Anything we can dream up is real.

We need stories because they destroy impossibilities.

We need stories because they beckon us to live greater ones.