The Land of No Stories

November 27, 2024

Once upon a time, there lived a peoples who rarely spoke. They had no written language because such a thing was not needed. And they scarcely ever used lungs and tongues and mouths to express, although they could.

Anything they needed to communicate was easily and nearly instantly made known, wherever they directed a targeted thought. This consisted of chunks of knowledge and awareness that slotted into place in the other’s awareness, smoothly as a well-oiled bolt snicking home.

But one day, a girl just barely becoming a woman felt an overwhelming urge to open her mouth and…share her words. 

“Mother, Father, you must come see! I have found a tiny tiger cub whose mother died. We must bring it here and feed it and warm it…”

Unthinkingly, her parents responded by speaking. Others in the tribe gathered near and began asking questions out loud. 

And just like that, the peoples who rarely spoke started telling their first stories. 

*****

That’s how I imagine we might have moved from inchoate yet crystal-clear being-to-being communication, to the land of words we now inhabit. 

But are we headed back to the land of no stories? Does higher dimensional existence—knowing anything we want to know without even asking questions—then mean we won’t want or need to speak? To write or record? Will simply knowing everything satisfy our intrinsic need for beginning, middle, end—our need for story?

Gosh, I hope not. I’m not sure whether it’s third-dimensional to be so attached to storytelling, or the inevitable result of a lifetime spent reading and writing stories, but I cannot imagine knowing things and not wanting to spin the tale of what they are. 

*****

Even now, as sophisticated as we believe we are, we’re enthralled by the current story of the world. It’s traumatic and often horrifying, but we can barely wait for the next installment of What’s Happening Now to be released. Our eagerness to hear (and tell) tales both marvelous and troubling keeps us hooked to information sources and our chatty network of friends. 

I doubt that the endlessly repeated analogy that we’re watching a movie is accidental. Most of us know immediately that there’s truth to that, and we understand what it means. 

Humans live in stories and think in stories. Every utterance can engage another in the dramas of life, large and small and everything in between. To lift a chunk of knowledge or experience from our inner storage system, transfer it to another person, and have them know the whole tale beginning to end in an instant, feels flat and unsatisfying. Ho, hum.

At least, it feels that way to me. Given that our future-soon-to-be-present will have a foundation of unshakable freedom, I’m sure I can choose enthrallment within stories, fictional or real-life. And if I ever want to step away from the spinning of tales, that’s available too…although I think it would require complete rewiring of my DNA and obliterating ancestral memories to go that route.