“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”
The quote above is from Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World by David Orr. I want to focus on the word "storyteller." Nowadays we have books and digital devices that store text. Nonetheless, the novelists and freelance writers of the world are the other starving artists. Those are career titles that cause heads to shake.
I spent the first half of college thinking I would go to law school. I would graduate at the top of my class and go on to make lots of money doing whatever legal practice was the most lucrative. That was how I had defined success. I wanted prestige and cash. In my heart I was an artist, but my desire to be rich trumped my desire to have a "if money were no object" dream job. Then I had an epiphany that made me reevaluate how I viewed my creativity.
Creative writing was not simply a career path I needed to take up to make myself happy. I needed to take it up because I would be able to make a far larger impact on the world with it. Earning money would not help me leave my mark, but if people looked at my words they would see the world through my eyes. In my opinion, understanding the world through the perspective of another is the key to peace.
My epiphany was fueled by the stories being weaved all around me. I knew by the way my Dungeons and Dragons game master weaved a campaign that storytelling was an important art. He pitted us against very real struggles with very real consequences, all on paper. They made me ask: "What would I do if I were in this situation?" and let me navigate the consequences in a safe way.
Consequence navigation is one power of the story. Another power is inspiration. When Cristal Logothetis shared her story about sending 100 baby carriers to Syrian refugees arriving in Greece, thousands of people offered carriers and their time for distribution. Her efforts were multiplied and thousands of lives were improved because she wrote about her own triumphs.
Stories also help us understand others. I recently spent some time traveling with a once acquaintance, now friend I knew little about. I heard the story of their childhood and gained new perspective on their experiences. I was able to see how parts of their past contributed to the person they had become. The story also allowed me to find things we had in common and better to relate to them.
Historians might argue the most important function of the story is to remind us of the past and help us preserve it for future use. A history professor in my life told me we can't look to history for a direct solution, but we can see patterns and use them to guide our thinking in the present.
With violent acts of terror, refugees fleeing the violence of their homelands and increased gun homicide, our world is in turmoil. We need people to help us process, relate, remember and preserve more than ever.
Don't turn away from storytelling because you want "success." Redefine success and use your stories to help shape the world around you in a way money never could.
