Imperishable Goods (or Why Stories Endure)

Tale As Old As Time…

It’s an odd thing, the telling of a tale. The author spills words across a page and maybe (just maybe) they end up resonating with a person. Where poems typically use a sparse economy of words to convey a message or theme stories get hundreds. Maybe thousands. Hell maybe hundreds of thousands!

The question remains, however: how did spinning a good yarn manage to replace clacking two rocks together as human’s primary source of entertainment?   

Simple! Stories scratch that most fundamental of human needs: communication.

Human beings are social creatures after all. We need to interact with each other. We need to feed off of the doings of our fellow man in order to learn and grow.

And, most importantly, we need to not be bored to death while doing it.

And stories? Well, stories are the perfect vehicle to deliver all of that and more.

They allow us to share information, sure, but they do so much more- allowing us to impart important life lessons, introduce different points of view (some of which may challenge our own pre-existing notions or prejudices) and all while engaging that lovely little vice called “curiosity.”   

Whether it’s a tale involving the reader’s local area or lands far away (or even lands that don’t exist) good stories will introduce us to memorable protagonists and antagonists as we embark on an adventure that inherently triggers both our empathy and our imagination.   

The emotional connection with the characters, along with the cognitive investment made to picture the world in which they live, makes the lesson of the story (whatever that may be) something we remember. A shared journey with not only the characters themselves, but with others who have read the tale as well.

This disjointed communication can survives across centuries, leading to a better understanding of our own world by the exploration of another; allowing us to gain a newfound appreciation for the struggles and successes of others as well as offering a mirror of fiction with which to study our own.

As the mighty colossus of literature sometimes referred to as Neil Gaiman once said:

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.