Why storytelling?

When we were kids in the fifties, our parents used to read to us tales about witches and trolls. Some of them were real gruesome. Sometimes there would be an illustration in the book to enhance our imagination but mostly the pictures were created in our own minds. Whereas I imagined the look of a witch, my brother  insisted on knowing on what number in the street she lived. We had all different ways of making use of  our imagination but our worlds of fancy were always there, parallel to the real world.

This was in the early days of television when images came more slowly and when there was plenty of time for our minds to reflect on what we heard and read. We had minds filled with pictures created by our own imagination.

Now we are literally bombarded with all kinds of information. A stream of images hits our perception every minute; on TV, in the daily paper, in our mail, in town, on commercial posters, etc. The torrent of random images we are constantly exposed to, leaves no time for reflection.  When ready-made images are legion, nothing is left to our own creative forces.

It is not sheer useless nostalgia wanting to capture some of the feelings from the times when life pursued its course more slowly; when there was time to listen to a storyteller by the fire in the dim moonlight, time to let the words sink in and time to form inner scenarios.

Legends and myths make life possible to cope with: they help us to meet fears and threats as well as the basic antitheses of our existence: life and death, good and evil.
They tell us who we are, explaining why and how. And they are not so different in the different parts of the world. It seems like there is more to unite us than to keep us apart.

Modern docusoaps are of course the legends and myths of our time. It is where we should "learn" what relationships are like, how to survive in weird hyped situations. But they never help us to find out who we are and where we came from; they never search behind the glittering commercial  surface.

The art of storytelling should never get outdated. Perhaps more than ever we need to learn how to listen. We need to feed and train our imagination: an ability that most often disappears in the transition from fanciful childhood to matter-of-factly adult life. A transition that comes earlier these days.
To take the time to listen requires more of us but at the same time it makes us develop fancy, imagination and empathy, thus reuniting us with our inner and outer universe.

Storytelling could be the mental umbrella protecting our minds from being worn out by the glaring image rain of modern life.