Human Potential and Story

Sometimes when I explain my theories about story and how its telling sustains and nurtures society, people retort that stories don’t reflect real life–that they’re usually romanticized versions of life in which the good guys always win and the bad guys always lose. “Fairy tales aren’t real,” they might say, “they don’t represent actual life.”

“You’re right,” I would respond, “they don’t represent daily, real-world incidents; what they represent instead is our potential.”

In real life, the good guy doesn’t always win, but stories show us that he has the potential to do so and therein they rally us toward making it actually happen. Stories show us that we have the potential to achieve things like peace, to find and keep love and to brave the unshakeable faults of our mortality. If we want any chance of ensuring that future generations will see such a world, then we must share our stories far and wide and convince the world that it is possible: only then can we hope to see our potential flourish.

I take my place on the stage in order to show the world who we are and–more importantly–who we could be in hopes that our audience will accept it not as entertainment, but as a challenge.