Stories are how we relate to the world.
There’s a reason I usually wind up starting my blog posts with
stories. They make things relatable;
they set the stage for the point I’m going to (attempt to? hopefully? You tell me) make by providing a
framework that people can latch onto for understanding.
Stories do the whole “show, don’t tell” thing we all learn about in
English class. (Heck, they’re a main
reason for English class.) They’re
why we do story problems in math (and are usually the answer to “When am I ever
going to use this?”). They’re how we
learn about other people and the world.
Humans are built to understand stories.
They’re a mnemonic, and a framework for understanding concepts,
connections, context. They take
something out of our experience and sometimes even ability to understand, and
make it so that we can grasp at least the essence of the issue and come away
with a better understanding than we had before by relying on the sharing of
someone else’s experience.
Consider the Star Trek: The Next
Generation episode “Darmok”.
