ON STORYTELLING

Any story told must, by its very nature, be oversimplified. Certain details are accentuated, brought out and made significant, while other details are left in the shadows or skipped over entirely.

But that’s fine. We don’t want play-by-plays for most things in life because we don’t have the time for that. Besides, we’re all occupied living our own play-by-plays.

The job of a storyteller, then, is to select. To pull threads of truth and fact from things that are and things that happen, and to weave them into meaning and significance. Storytellers pick and choose from the overwhelming detail, and then they direct our attention to it and tell us how to look at it, and sometimes even what to see.

Creative license means that storytellers don’t even need to remain faithful to every single fact. They must, however, remain faithful to the story, and always to the truth.

All storytelling is an exercise in finding and creating meaning.

All good storytelling results in a shared experience of understanding, a step taken together in our individual journeys toward truth. And that makes it something special. That makes it worthwhile.

In this space, I’m going to start telling my stories. I hope you enjoy them, and maybe even find some truth in them.