Our Story

I love a good story.  I love telling good stories.  I’ve had a to-do list item for a long time now that says, “Become a Bard.”  So far progress has been mediocre.  I’m doing okay in collecting unique sets of stories to tell, but I’m having some distinct difficulty with the whole “song and dance” bit.  My dreams of being a wandering minstrel notwithstanding, there is something significant about stories.

In fact, in the study of communication and rhetoric, some researches have gone so far as to call us Homo Narrans.  Where a Homo Sapiens is quite literally a “wise man,” with Home Narrans the idea of story is appended onto the more conventional idea of wisdom.  Rather than engaging the world in a purely logical and reasoned fashion, we engage through the stories that we know and tell about others and our selves.  Here is a place where the argumentative persuasive theme intertwines with the literary aesthetic theme.  It is a thing made of creative elements that is meant to be grasped, understood and told, not merely observed.

There are several different levels at play here simultaneously.  The stories that a culture tells about itself mesh and interact with the purely personal stories of a place and time.  The stories that a culture tells about itself, imparted through both formal and informal histories of that people, provide the framework for discussions of belonging, direction, and purpose.  This is one more reason why movies, books, and music remain particularly relevant.  Our contemporary story-tellers are presenting points of view, cultural critiques, and philosophy with every scrap of art that is created.  There is a narrative at work, both on a meta-level and within each of the stories that we are told.  Knowing these stories can help us to understand culture as a whole and our position regarding it.

On a more individual level, we tell stories about others and our selves.  Even regardless of the particular validity of these stories, they are each powerful.  We think in stories and are bound to react to them because of their fundamental nature in our own psyche.  I can retell you many of the stories that I’ve heard in lectures and speeches … even if I can’t tell you the rest of the presentation.

Every story in our culture and even in our own personal life has the interesting labels of both “situated and situating.”  Every story is built upon the teller’s particular environment – it is situated in a particular context.  It is a product of culture and personality.  But a story is also more than a mere reflection of contemporary moods and issues.  It is also situating.  Every new story places its unique mark upon the ever-growing annals of society.  A story comes from a frozen history but has the unique capability to help to shape times to come.  Stories simultaneously are an important link to the past and a vital imagining for the future.  That is a powerful communicative tool indeed.

So, I guess the point is that there are stories everywhere.  In being aware of these stories, plumbing their argumentative and aesthetic depths, we can better understand the world and our place in it.  We are meant to be story-tellers.  We are all bards and troubadours.  With this sweeping pronouncement, the question then becomes, are you taking an active part in your story?  Life is more than a read-through of some script.  It is the best sort of impromptu narrative that you’ve ever seen.