Story: Essential Foils

Stories are more important than details. Meaning must be made, even if you happen to think that everything is meaningless. Fiction is as true as truth when it wrestles with that great, gaping maw of life’s randomness. I'm not advocating the search for a grand narrative behind all of this. If all we experience is connected, we're not equipped to find the thread that holds it all together, even as sure as I feel that there is an intent in this all. Rather, I believe everyone should see the world in the context of story. Not one they are a part of, but one they are authoring. If you see life as a story unfolding as you move through it, your passivity actually hurts the people around you. If you see yourself as having been given authorship in your tiny piece of the larger narrative, your actions matter whether or not you think they do. In the cosmic scale, we write our universe because as broad as our reach has become, we are still always and ever beholden to this present tense second.

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Every single human should take a creative writing class. I’m not saying that everyone should be a writer (see my earlier passage regarding whether or not I think I should be one). But everyone should consider stories from the perspective of a maker rather than merely a listener or reader. It will definitely change the way they see the people around them. It will teach them about those people, and, in contrast and conjunction, themselves. It might even teach those willing to listen a little something about God.