Why Do We Need a Master Story?
Why Story?
YOUR ARE YOUR STORIES. You are the product of all the stories you have heard and lived – and of many that you have never heard. They have shaped how you see yourself, the world, and your place in it….
Our greatest desire, greater even than the desire for happiness, is that our lives mean something. This desire for meaning is the originating impulse of story. We tell stories because we hope to find or create significant connections between things. Stories link past, present and future in a way that tells us where we have been (even before we were born), where we are, and where we could be going.
Our stories teach us that there is a place for us, that we fit. They suggest to us that our lives can have plot. Stories turn mere chronology, one thing after another, into the purposeful action of plot, and thereby into meaning…
[Internalized stories] often seem intractable because [they] are almost indestructible, essentially impervious to abstract reason, threat, evidence and bribe. Getting me to give up the stories that created me requires a replacement story of overwhelming power.
—Daniel Taylor, Tell Me a Story
There is a parable attributed to Rabbi Bal Shem Tov that concludes, “God created people because He loves stories.” From the quote above, you can see that stories and the telling of stories is vitally important to understanding ourselves and our world.