THE POWER OF STORIES
I have never really thought of myself as a writer. I have not written a lot of articles. But as life experiences have taught me, it’s always important to tell people your story. You can tell stories to people — friends and family members and maybe the people you meet in life. Those stories you tell may have an effect on the people listening to you, depending on how much they relate to your story and probably the passion with which you pass on the story to them. It could be a life changing event for some people and it may just be another bunch of sentences to others. It may even be offensive to others. In any case, no one can tell your story better than you.
Lately, I’ve come to understand the importance of telling stories. At least I know how much I have benefited from people who were bold enough to tell theirs and we learn from their experiences, their successes, their failures, their good times, their downtimes, their time of gain and time of loss, time of laughter and time of tears.
What we learn may not be a lesson that changes our lives completely changes our lives or brings about a complete turnaround in the way we do things. It could be something as simple as how we lay when we sleep or the order in which we cook certain dishes. But that lesson, as insignificant as it may seem, may become what brings some meaning into our lives, what makes us admired by our peers, what makes us stand out. Why? Because that insignificant lesson was applied in many variants to other parts of our lives.
In essence, our lives are made up of different stories put together to form a whole. Our lives are made up of lessons pulled from our interactions with other people. My friend, Sakhile Xulu said, “No idea is original, every idea or product you see was gotten from somewhere or was learned.” This may translate to a theory that the more stories we experience, the more ideas we have, and thus the more likely we are to be successful. I must say that when I talk about stories here, I don’t refer to fiction, even though they can play a role, I am referring to real stories, real people, real experiences.
In conclusion, we can see the importance of telling stories, telling our experiences to the world, to as many people as possible, so people learn under various circumstances they find themselves and create variations of lessons learned to make their lives meaningful and that of those around them, and the cycle continues. I also want to use this article as an introduction to the many stories of real people that will be coming after.
These people may not be popular or people we see on TV or hear on the radio. They may not be people with a thousand friends on Facebook or ten thousand followers on Twitter or Instagram.
I believe everyone is a hero in his/her own little way, no matter how terrible they may seem. Even in the evil we do to each other, we still gain some good, which is the experience and how we ensure such evil does not happen to us again or to the people we love.
