I love stories and by stories I mean people recounting events, narrating lives, describing emotions and feelings in context. Whether its fictional or not, I believe that storytelling is powerful, beautiful and fantastic. More than often, I talk about story-telling because I am so fascinated by the craft.
Storytelling is not just limited to writers. Even ordinary people who don’t think of themselves as writers, would carefully pickup words, form sentences, build structure and emotions around their stories. They would try their best, to not only just tell you what happened, but to also convey the feelings and emotions behind the events.
On Quora someone asked, “What does it feel like to have schizophrenia?“. The answers are from real people having this disorder. The answers are simple, no complicated words, no fancy vocabulary, yet they are so emotionally charged and you can almost feel what people are writing. This is a beautiful example of narrating lives. The pain in these answers is so clearly visible, there is the glimpse of the horror these people face when their realities are turned down and the world around them becomes a matrix. There is courage in struggling with paranoia, disorder, chaos, and disbelief. There is hope that things will get better by each day.
What I love about Quora, is that an ordinary person like me, can just walk in and sit among many brilliant people, and just listen. These people talk about everything from science to arts, history and future, crafts and culture. I can ask them questions, and sometimes I can even answer questions. The fascinating part is that the human desire to share knowledge has given us so many tools and technologies. However, narrating human lives by sharing stories is still the most powerful one.