The Tale Is In The Necessity

Have you ever stopped to think about why storytelling is a thing?

After all, why did our ancestors bother to create legends and tales while fending off sabre toothed tigers instead of focusing more on finding berries to eat, or a dry place to sleep, or, you know, preventing aforementioned sabre toothed tigers from making more of them into lunch?

Why is it that, to this day, kids play games of make believe while adults use creative invention as a means to unwind?

It’s because storytelling is fundamental to the human experience.

The very act of using our mind for entertainment purposes makes us unique to our world. It makes us who we are. By extension, stories are an expression of who we are and are therefore an inherently human accomplishment. Man is indeed a social creature, and human beings require communion with other humans. Stories give us the vehicle to share that special something with our fellow man. People across the world and across time have need of stories for the same reason true stories need to be told: they’re an expression of inner truth, an avenue of shared experiences. Most importantly they’re a way to remember what must not be forgotten.

At the risk of waxing poetic: fiction is a gateway to the soul. The stories we tell are eternal the same way we are eternal. Fiction is a form of immortality, dear reader, allowing us to see across oceans and through time into the minds of humans far away or long dead.

What’s more, it’s damn fun!

Think about it! When you read a book you’re experiencing a kind of Vulcan mind-meld with the author, touching some part of their creative being as it carries your consciousness across any manner of far off planes.

When you write, you’re putting yourself out there to offer others that same experience.

If that isn’t beautiful then I don’t know what is.