The Storytellers

 Barbara Heagy Summer 2015 001

Reading good books inspires me. Writing allows me to share my life. We need to tell our stories, they connect us, as we share the tapestry of our lives.

In more ancient cultures the oral story-tellers were held in esteem as they were the reservoirs of life tales. They ensured the tales of long ago were passed on to future generations, and not just for entertainment. The stories were told so that we would never forget, so that one’s memory could live on through future generations. They were told so that we could learn from the past. Stories helped others understand who they were and where they came from.

The oral story-tellers in our modern day culture exist now in bars where tales are told over foaming pints of beer, around campfires, dinner tables, and steaming cups of latte in the local coffee shop. We have become a world of printed words and pictures. Electronic media connects us and these are the new ways our stories are passed on in busy lives. Readers sit behind worn paperback books, computer screens, glowing Kindles and Smartphones. Facebook, Hotmail, Youtube and Instagram ensure we continue to share our lives with each other. We still love our stories. We still need the stories. Now we need the writers, the photographers, and the film-makers to be the tellers of the tales and, with technology, we all have the potential to be the story-teller.

Past or present, we are all human, we are all the same – we live, we breathe, we smile, we wipe tears from our children’s faces. We share joy and suffering, the strong look after the weak, we bury our dead as we, too, will be buried someday. Stories satisfy our desire to stay connected, for when our stories end, we end. Stories are as important for us now as they were a way back then.

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