There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
—Ursula K. LeGuin
Before we move forward, let's explore the big idea of why we tell stories. Many, many people have tackled this subject, but none have answered it to my satisfaction —and I may not answer the question in a way that suits you, but I think it may help to at least consider my theory.
A few years ago, I was with some friends at a Mexican
The next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor surrounded by concerned restaurant patrons. Seeing that I was confused, someone said to me, "It's okay, you just had a seizure."
What? I'd never had a seizure before and had no idea why this would have happened.
Needless to say, I was upset by this news.
I was rushed in an ambulance to the hospital, where they did a series of neurological tests on me while my mother, other family members, and old friends waited to hear whether I had some kind of brain tumor. It was a very scary event.
The doctors finally told me that I was fine. The stupid truth was that I had passed out from the brain freeze. Turns out when your brain is not getting enough blood, your body gets the message to pass out so that you will lie down, allowing blood to flow easily through your body. I was relieved and embarrassed to hear that I had only fainted.
But it made a good story, and I told a few people. Well,
It seemed that this story spread like wildfire. I wondered exactly why people found this story so interesting—so entertaining.
I think it's because buried within the story is survival information. And this survival information is, I believe, the reason we tell stories. We are engaged by stories that contain this kind of information. Not only that, but we also feel compelled to spread this information by repeating the story to others.
In a very real sense, just like living organisms, good stories replicate themselves—they reproduce. And just like living things, the strong survive and the weak die off. A strong story that contains solid survival information can survive for thousands of years.
Imagine a group of early humans at the dawn of time as they forage for grubs and roots.
One of them finds a bush decorated with tasty-looking red berries. Just as he is about to pop one into his mouth, a friend stops him. The friend tells him not to eat those berries because his grandfather told him that once, long ago, many people ate these berries, and after a long, painful illness most of them died.
In a case like that, nature would favor those who listened to stories and learned from them because the ones who did not would die before they could pass on their genes. So the people and the story live on.
We are all descendants of people who understood the importance of stories and inherited this trait, which is why we seek them out and consume them daily.
You may think that my little brain freeze story doesn't have much in the way of survival information. But I guarantee that the next time you have a cold drink and you feel a brain freeze coming on, you will think back on this story and know that your brain is not getting enough blood and that there is no need to panic and rush off to the hospital.
Stories are vital to our existence. Not in any esoteric, abstract way, but in a quite practical way. We could not live without stories.
I know a woman who at one time was a flight attendant and I once asked her if anything scary had ever happened to her on a plane. She went on to tell me that a few people had died on her flights.
Then she told me that once while she was on a flight a young boy was constantly running up and down the aisle, back and forth to the bathroom and annoying the other flight attendants.
My friend was concerned and asked the boy's mother if he was okay. The mother said that she thought so. My friend then noticed that the boy's lower lip was swollen and asked about it.
The mother said that she didn't know what it was and thought that maybe the boy had been bitten by a bug or something.
It was then that my friend was reminded of a story that her parents had told her about her father. Turns out her father has a severe fish allergy, and once his lip swelled as a reaction. He was rushed to the emergency room where he was treated.
My friend asked the boy's mother if the boy was allergic to fish. The woman did not know. But my friend checked the flight's menu and saw that they had served a salad with shrimp, and suspected this was an allergic reaction.
The plane had a direct line to the Mayo Clinic, so my friend called and they confirmed her suspicions and instructed her on what to do. When the plane landed, there was a medical team waiting. It turns out the boy might have gotten very ill or even died if my friend had not remembered this story.
This is exactly how we use stories every day. When my friend heard this story about her father, she did not consciously file it away to be pulled out just when she
As long as there have been people, and wherever there are people, they have told stories.
If this were not essential to our survival, there would surely be people without stories. But there are none in the history of the world.
Stories are a way to get the benefit of someone else's experience without having to have the experience oneself. For example on January 15, 2009, shortly after take-off, US Airways Flight 1549 piloted by Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger was struck by a flock of geese and had to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York. This incident became known as "Miracle on the Hudson" and Sully became a hero.
The day of this famous landing I was watching MSNBC's Keith Olbermann show, which reported the breaking news. By phone, Mr. Olbermann spoke with Denny Fitch, the pilot of another famed crash landing, to get an expert opinion on the incident.
Fitch said that he thought that Sully was the perfect pilot to handle such an emergency because he had been an accident investigator for the Nation Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). He had plenty of stories in his head of emergency situations that were handled poorly and knew
If you think about it this is the only reason to have the NTSB. Why investigate accidents at all? It can't help the victims of the crash. But it may help others in the future. So we investigate to help others who might one day face the same, or a similar, set of circumstances.
Knowing these stories help pilots and airlines reduce the number of tragic accidents.
Sully had more of these stories in his head than most pilots. This was the equivalent of having more flight experience.
In fact, Fitch said something I found fascinating. He told Keith Olbermann that most pilots "go to school every day." He said they engage in what is called "hangar flying." Hangar flying, as he described it, is when pilots are on the ground exchanging stories of being in hairy situations. He said that this was a way for them to learn from what others had gone through. It was a way to go to school on someone else's tuition, he said.
Hangar flying is a perfect example of how we use stories every day. Most of us are just not as aware as the pilots that we are doing it.
When I was a kid, in about 5th or 6th grade, there was a steep hill in our neighborhood that was used for sledding whenever there was enough snow. Every new kid was told
The boy had the wind knocked out of him, but felt more or less okay. He did go home though, and laid down for a nap. He never woke up. He had broken a rib and punctured an internal organ.
In hearing that story, we all learned both to be careful going down the hill, and that if we did have an accident, to be sure we weren't more hurt than we first thought.
I remember passing this story along after I had heard it, the same as it was passed to me.
My guess is it's still being told. Even as children we could not help but pass along survival information in the form of a story. We had no idea we were doing so, but we did it just the same.
We all do as the neighborhood kids did on top of that snowy hill—we tell stories because we find them interesting for some reason and can't help but to share them.
The story of the Titanic has many lessons, but one of them is that there ought to be enough lifeboats for everyone onboard a ship. How many lives has this saved?
We have all heard a story about someone whose life was
Because stories contain valuable survival information, we are ravenous consumers of stories and seek them out daily. You might get your daily requirement of story nourishment by reading the news, reading a book, listening to the radio, or gossiping and talking with co-workers and friends. Chances are you did one or more of these things today. In fact, I have told a few stories to you since you started reading this. We cannot escape them, nor can we live without them.
When I was a young child, a family friend lost the use of his legs when he was struck by a car while opening his car door without looking behind him.
You will not be able to stop yourself from remembering this story whenever you exit a car on the side of traffic. That story gives us survival information, so we tuck it away until we need it. We have an endless number of such stories in our heads.
Not all stories are about saving one's physical life; some are about things like getting along in a society, such as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." Its lesson is: if you are known to be a liar, you will not be believed even when you tell the
Still another kind of story teaches us to have the proper mental attitude to succeed in life.
One such story is "The Tortoise and the Hare." The lesson there is: slow and steady wins the race. It is a story that illustrates the value of perseverance.
One of my favorite stories is the Zen parable "The Blind Men and the Elephant." In this story, six blind men came upon an elephant. They had never seen an elephant so they all explored the animal with their hands.
The first man felt the broad side of the elephant and told the others that an elephant is much like a wall. The second man felt the tusk and said, "No, the elephant is round and smooth and sharp." The third man approached the animal, found the trunk, and said that an elephant was "just like a snake." The fourth blind man reached out and grabbed a leg and said, "The elephant is like a tree." The fifth man touched the ear and said, "Even the blindest man can tell that what this animal resembles is a fan!" The sixth happened to grasp the tail and proclaimed that his friends were all wrong. "The elephant is very much like a
The men continued to argue, each holding to his own opinion, even though they all had a piece of the truth.
This story tells us that we may each have a part of the truth and that we would do well to listen to one another to get a clearer picture of things. Think of how many disputes, both large and small, could be avoided if we all heeded the lesson of this story.
Some of you are thinking that some stories exist strictly for entertainment and have no survival information. Think about it this way: is food for tasting good? Is that its sole purpose?
No. Food is what we use for fuel. We absorb valuable nutrients from the consumption of food.
Yes, food can taste good and stories can be entertaining, but this is not why we have a need to consume them.
I believe that stories without a point are on par with eating poison. It is like eating a diet of fast food. It may taste good, but it is, in fact, slowly killing you. It is no coincidence that bad stories have been called "junk food" and "bubble gum"—flavor without nutrition.
But remember: good food does not need to be tasteless, and good stories do not need to be pointless.
We need stories to live.
