But even the greatest story known to man still required at least two people to experience its transformation. Telling a story without an audience is like shouting into the wind. So how do we prepare ourselves to choose and then ingest positive stories that bring value into our lives?
I think, like most things in life, that sometimes we tend to make things more complicated than they have to be. For instance, have you ever observed a skilled storyteller captivating a room of young children with his or her words? I loved to watch the face of my daughter as she was being transported to another place, perhaps even another time, through the power of story. Of course there is skill involved, even for the young children listening in the example above. But mostly the choice to immerse oneself into an experience is a natural response, a bent that we all possess. We gravitate toward social interaction, (well, most of us) the sharing of information, and since the beginning of time have been fascinated by the dynamics that such interaction brings into our lives.
Still need convincing? Well, for example, did you know that dice aren’t a modern invention? In fact, they’re probably among the oldest known gaming tools known to man. During an excavation in Southeastern Iran, archeologists discovered a 3,900-year-old set of dice! We don’t know exactly what games those early Persians would have played with them, but the popularity of dice has endured throughout the centuries. To go even further back in time the earliest known board games are over 5,000 years old and were played by the Egyptians. We don’t know the rules of these games, but there is a “Senet” board that dates back to about 3500 B.C.! There are references to tile games in China that are over 2,900 years old and dominoes emerged 1,000 years later during the Song Dynasty (also in China). And everyone knows about the cave art discovered in Spain, depicting everyday life, recorded for all to see.
The point is that art, stories, and games are some of the oldest ways that we as humans have connected to each other, passed along information, and engaged in fun activities. And those needs have not diminished in the age that we live.
But there is one thing that has changed dramatically over the past 50 years, the necessity to engage in these activities in person. Yes, we could read a book that spans hundreds of years of culture, but chances are we would still share that information with those around us, maybe over a cup of coffee, or at a dinner table. Now, however, a great majority of human interaction is done through significantly less personal encounters. The birth of the internet has enabled humankind to experience an almost unfathomable jump in our access to information and yet at the same time we have seen an almost immeasurable reduction in person-to-person interactions. This is not a bashing of the gift of the internet but an observation of what we have gained as well as what we have lost.
Let’s use the law of diminishing returns as another example. The law of diminishing returns is an economic principle stating that as an investment in a particular area increase, the rate of profit from that investment, after a certain point, cannot continue to increase if other variables remain at a constant. In other words, all things remaining the same, there is a point where the amount of effort exceeds the value you will benefit from that action. I believe that the internet is a prime example of this behavior. The problem is we all operate under set boundaries in our lives, time, finances, relational capital, etc. So in the past, when we engaged in the act of telling and listening to stories, for instance, we were not doing so at the expense of other social benefits that we need to remain healthy. That is not the case in today’s modern society. This is such an obvious implication that further examples are probably not needed, as every person reading this can probably think of several situations where this is true in his or her life.
But let’s end this conversation on a more positive note by asking a simple question that I hope brings you joy and maybe even provokes a desire to dig further into the stories, games, art that made you happy throughout your life.
Can you recall a story / game / art from your childhood that still weaves a spell over you today?
