Reality VS Fiction

Last week, I learned that the senate can give a the supreme chancellor emergency powers to form an galactic army. I was able to learn this because instead of watching the U.S. election, I started watching all 11 Star Wars movies. I figure if here was going to be talk of an evil force influencing politicians, adding laser guns, light sabers, and light speed would make it more interesting.

I was wrong. I have the pleasure of knowing and being friends with stand-up comics. Thanks to vote counts, premature claims of victory, and Kayne West, there have been no shortage of jokes. But the storyteller in me began to wonder, what will the stories be? You see, unlike jokes, stories take longer to develop. Comics can craft a decent joke in 10  mins. The stories of what is happing at the moment will take a few days at least to craft into something people can listen to. 

I’ve only been a storyteller for about 5-6 years. I am constantly working on stories, particular personal narrative stories. I can begin to notice when I am witnessing the middle of the story. So I wondered “Are others are noticing the same thing right now?”

It doesn’t matter if you are a storyteller or not, you still can tell a story. Your story. The story about what you are seeing right now. Your perceptive won’t be mine, and that is why it’s needed. Without your story, history will not remember a perspective other than what is given. The election results will be forever recorded in US history. The stories of the people who lived through may not be. I ask everyone, storyteller or not, to do 3 things:

• Record your stories
  • Without getting too far into story crafting, the more detail you put down now, the easier to craft the story later will be. Don’t worry about where the story is going at the moment. Just get it recorded. Write it down. Type it. Record a video or audio recording. Add your feelings to the story. Your thoughts. Your expectations.

• Tell the stories
  • And tell it, again, and again, and again. An untold personal story can hold an untold part of the truth. The world needs to hear truth, even when isn’t pretty. Not everyone will hear the story the first time. People will learn new things as they listen again, again.  Be ready to tell it over and over again.

• Listen to the stories of others
  • Someone else’s story doesn’t become invalid because your story exists. Putting together the story of others helps to understand the bigger truth. Darth Vader, the biggest villain of Star Wars. But when you learn his back story, you understand how he got to that point. He’s still evil, but we now understand why.

I still would like a version of the election that involved a space ship ride to a far off place. More realistically, I’ll stake stories that present your truth. Be sure to tell your story on purpose.