The Baker-Baker Paradox and Underappreciated Power of Story
Whether you write fiction or non, our greatest ally against obscurity, is story
Ever walked into someone’s home and smelled a familiar smell — maybe a scent that reminded you of your grandmother? That smell was like a time machine. You were immediately transported to your grandmother’s living room, digging through her candy dish. You were seven then. Now you’re forty-five.
Or maybe you were in the car and you saw a billboard. On the billboard was a familiar picture of a beach. You remember the great vacation you had last year, all the positive vibes you had with your family — and those powerful ten-seconds where that huge wave knocked you on your ass.
We’re wired for story.
Our brains eat stories like candy. We crave the stuff, because our memory works by chaining things together. We like patterns. Take a grand master chess player, toss all the chess pieces on a board in a disorganized pile, and she won’t see anything different than a three-year-old. However, if you take those same pieces and arrange them in the final position where Kasparov took the win in 2000, she’ll see a library of combinations — tiny, mental daisy-chained stories, played through her brain at lightning speed.
