Pause: Show Me a Story

Until recently all people told stories to make sense out of life. When Burt proposed to Jane, her mother told her stories of how Jane's father proposed to her, of wedding day catastrophes and of their first fight. She hoped Jane would learn something from the telling: the right and wrong ways of going about things, and how to understanding the meaning of events. People informed one another, conveyed meaning and moral sense by telling stories. Most stories held lessons about mundane affairs: the grist of day-to-day life. These were the Little Stories.

When it came time to address the Big Questions, every society drew from its own stock of Big Stories. These usually took place long, long ago in places faraway, but they held great import for the present. Their characters loomed larger than life, their grand dramas heroic or tragic. They revealed wisdom to those who listened closely: where the world came from, why we are here and where we are going. Such meaning-filled stories populate the scriptures, myths and epic poems of every people. Everyone knew that telling one of these large stories sustained the world.

We fear the power of nuclear fusion to shape or destroy the world physically, but people of old knew the power of the Big Story to shape or destroy worlds spi…