What is a story?

What is a story?

A story is a path not of our choosing, 
It is the gentle art of losing:

The dead ends of knowing.

A story is nothing for the faint of heart.
Because a story is a piece of art!
A mirror unto itself,
and a shadow of the highest wealth.

But what is art?
Well, it is an act of taking part,
in the universe’s holy choir,
singing from the highest spire:
 
A story is the interplay between words and way,
on which you will find the thing that will find you.

Have you ever wondered what a story really is? Are you perhaps a walking story?
The answer might be more perplexing and empowering than you could have hoped for.

At some point it just so happened that something started to happen. And oh, what a happening, for now things would be about to happen…
The most basic thing in a story is simply that something is happening.
Some form of development across time, a movement from here to there, from then to now, to next.

One might say: but isn't that just life? And that would be almost right, but there is the key difference: A story is inherently communicable and therefore carries a quality of coherence. Life in its sometimes-confusing greatness doesn't necessarily possess the same quality. In life, there are so many variables that could be brought into relation with each other that it can become overwhelming.
But as soon as we make a story out of it, we focus on what is truly relevant and what could be true. A story is a way of viewing life so that potential meaning can be found and shared.

But a story is more than a frame. It is an interface, the living space between a self and a world, shaped by both and transforming both. It doesn't belong entirely to the one telling it, nor to the world it describes. It lives in the between. It has no body, but it lives in and between everybody.

And this is precisely what makes a story different from a narrative.

A narrative knows where it's going. It is constructed backwards from its conclusion, selecting and arranging facts to arrive at a predetermined point. A story doesn't know its ending. A story explores winding paths into genuinely open territory, pulling the teller along with it. Where a narrative is a means to an end, a story is an end in itself. It is aimed not at utility, but at truth, a kind of truth that only emerges through participation instead of prediction. The more beautifully a story unfolds, the more it inspires the one who encounters it to strive towards the good. Of course, there are many dark stories, but I would argue that even the grimmest of stories inspire the good in us, for they illuminate the murkier tunnels of our soul, welcoming the demons living down there to the surface where they can be seen and consciously interacted with.

And this is also why a story transforms. A narrative can inform you while leaving you unchanged. A story, by nature, changes both the world it describes and the one who encounters it.
In that sense a story can be understood as something alive. The notion of a story as an autopoietic being, self-composing, self-creating, evokes a mysterious question for me: What is the essence of a story? What is the Story? And if it could have a face, what would it look like?
This question reminds me of Muriel Rukeyser's line: "the universe is made of stories, not of atoms." What if that is literally true? What if the universe is made up of sharable drops of experience, that together form an ocean full of inherent coherence striving to give birth to intelligent complexity? In other words: Everything, including me would be a story nested within a story, together composing the beauty of life in its totality.
So, when the absurdity of existence comes washing over us like a wave over an abandoned child drifting in an ocean of chaos, a story can be an anchor and a north star guiding us to connection and purpose.
I believe the face of The Story is a mirror facing itself and that our human faces are the billion shards striving to unify again. Each story is a fractal of The Story and when it comes to The Story, I think it is the very thing that makes relation of all the beings possible, so they can start becoming.
If I had to answer the question “what is a story” I would say: A story is the shadow image of life and sometimes I’m not quite sure if it’s not the other way around. -Why don’t you live it out yourself?

The Story:

Is
Mirroring itself into its deepest centre:
Merging, fighting, learning from itself,
because it is its own lover, enemy and mentor.

Fools, heroes, dragons, kings,
with bells, swords, crowns and wings.

All of them crawling out a swirling hole,
pushing towards finally being whole,
just to end up in the endless becoming
within the centre of the mandala.