The Storyteller

Stories are what humanity lives for. Whether an anecdote from yesterday’s brunch or a solid work of Shakespeare, stories teach us, shape us, inspire us, and above all, are us. Our lives are essentially, stories, played out on this giant stage we call life. We’re the characters, making decisions, following paths in the forest and sailing boats out to sea, chasing new directions and growing and changing and living. A person that holds a lot of stories, I believe, is the kind of person everyone should aspire to be. They take you into new perspectives, allow you to see from another side, and they can quite literally change your life. My family has passed down a story through many generations, it’s a really long story, hard to really contain in a couple of words. It’s a big book full of more books, some of which are super long and boring and hard to understand, others short and sweet and hella deep that makes you rethink existence. There’s a lot of different authors too, all of which are kind of dead, and there’s even a book that the author didn’t sign so we still have no idea who wrote it but we think it’s a guy named Paul. Keeper calls it the Book of Truth. Some call it bullcrap. Others call it the Bible.

I call it my inspiration to be a storyteller.

You see, not everyone believes what I believe. That’s because not everybody is me and I am not everybody. I don’t see the world the way someone else may, and someone else will never see the world the way I do. Life’s a unique experience for everyone. And yeah, a lot of things don’t make a lot of sense. I’m probably not even the best person to talk to about these kinds of topics because I don’t know a whole lot, I admit, and I don’t think I’d ever be able to tell the words right, something I’ve always had a fear of. I haven’t ever even completely finished the entire story, but I’m working on that, and intend to for the rest of my life. Because from Genesis to the final “Amen” of Revelation, the story doesn’t end there. But this story, it’s full ordinary people full of mistakes, but laying them down to serve their Lord, who spoke to them and guided them on a great plan. This story is full of war and battles and plagues and slavery. It’s full of parting seas and miracles and rules and laws and conditions. There’s death and killing and disobedience and folly, second chances and third chances and singing and dancing. You’ve got your inequality and desperation, pride and pain, suffering, prayers, vows to change. It’s names upon names upon names upon names and you have to go back like three chapters to remember who this guy was the son of who that guy was the son of and what exactly they did for a living. The protagonist keeps changing because the other ones died and now you’re like “What next?” And then we get to the good part: a baby’s born who’s the Messiah and he’s supposed to save the world. He grows up and starts a ministry, he gets a couple followers, but the authorities hate him because they think that he think he’s a big shot, and so he lays down some sick burns to try to get them to rethink their existence and what it means to “follow God” because what they were doing wasn’t that but hypocrisy. And it looks like we finally have a protagonist and he’s got like, twelve followers but that’s like, more than I’ll ever have on Instagram so that’s cool, and he goes around teaching and healing and accepting and loving and everyone’s like “Yes! He’s going to become out king and save us from all these terrible things!” but then GUESS WHAT HE DIES TOO. And he was tortured, nailed to a wood pole, and it only seems he succeeded in dying faster from dehydration than most people should facing this kind of punishment. And the crowd taunts him, screaming that if he were to really be the Son of God, then he could come down from that cross and show them all. If he were really the Son of God, he would do some miracle and be like “Look, I’m alive! You were wrong! Now bow to me!”

He dies. And we sing songs and smile and read about how great it was that he did that. Die.

His plan was not to become a king on the earth. He didn’t come to be wealthy or rich or to even settle and have a family. He came to die. For the people that killed him. For the liars and beggars and lepers and all the people who didn’t even care. He died for them. What kind of pain is that, what kind of suffering, what kind of destiny?

But he couldn’t just stay dead, no, and like all those stories, with the hero emerging victorious, this guy fights death, and comes back, three days later. His body that was locked in a tomb and blocked by a stone? Boom, stands again and these badass angels like casually scare off the guards and roll it away. And he’s like “I’m back world. I’m back.” And he wins. He wins.

This is the story. It’s the story I want to retell over and over again in as many ways as I can. It’s the story of death’s defeat, it’s the story of redemption and love and impossible odds, it’s the story of hope, and sacrifice and risking it all, expecting nothing in return. It’s of giving and receiving and taking away. It’s a symbol of death becoming a symbol of love, it’s the ultimate victory, the once and for all, the end of the beginning -

It’s the story I believe in. It’s the story I live in. But sometimes the world makes me afraid to tell it. Some make me feel unworthy to say it out loud, others call it garbage and some just don’t give a damn. We all tell stories. But every story we tell isn’t just some story. With stories, we explain the world. With stories we share our experiences. With stories we write and rewrite history. With stories we sing and with stories we cry, and with stories we change and with stories we’ll die.

We all have a story to tell.

This is mine.