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The Stories We Tell.

November 15, 2009    |    0 COMMENT(S)

Our CL111 prof, Sir Butch, asked us a very important question the other day in class:

"Why do we tell stories?"

Why are we compelled to write about them, why is there a need to share them, why do we feel like revealing a part of ourselves?

I've always been a storyteller. My friends can attest to that. I never really think much about it, it's just something that I do. I like sharing little random events that happen to me throughout the day, like when I saw a rainbow as I was riding the MRT on my way home, or how I just finished a whole bar of mazapan. It's something so normal, so natural to me that when the question was presented to us, I couldn't find an answer.

Why do I tell my stories? It's not as if it's everyone's business.

I didn't know really. It just happens. So I was stumped. For the next 30 seconds, I was scribbling on my all-purpose doodle notebook asking myself the same question over and over. It's an expected question given that it was a class on the Short Story, but I never really thought of it before.

And then Sir Butch said something.

"Because it is in sharing these stories that we make sense of them."


Everyday is a surprise for me. Sometimes things don't happen the way I thought they would, sometimes people don't turn out to be who I thought they were. And with every new discovery I can only grasp so much about what is happening. I believe that everything happens for a reason, but of course I won't always know what that reason is. That oblivion is often frustrating. Maybe I don't always question it out loud, but at the back of my mind, I know a part of me is wondering. And maybe by telling the stories, by sharing them, I am unconsciously trying to figure it out. Maybe there is a part of me that wants to step outside myself and look at what is happening to me from another point of view, and I can only do that by articulating it. Or writing it down.

So, I'm wondering: even after the countless stories I've shared about someone, why isn't it still making perfect sense?


Is it because there are more stories to be told?



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