The Stories We Can Touch.

So, I was reading Show Your Work by Austin Kleon and there was this chapter about how we are affected by the stories behind a piece of art and how that changes the way we might view that piece of art.

I think the most popular example is Harry Potter. I grew to love the series, it is a foundational part of my childhood. But J K Rowling’s transphobic comments and general bigotry started to change the way I saw the series. The story of the creator alters the story the creation tells.

I hope that illustrates my point well enough for you to get it. The story influences the ways we see art.

But this is true for even the mundane things. We add our own meaning to things that aren’t inherently valuable.

We love to collect autographs, not because of the way it looks, but because of the story behind it. That’s because we know our favourite idol, role model or celebrity touched that paper, and acknowledged us in some way. That’s really powerful.

A letter that Einstein wrote holding the Equation for Relativity sold for 1.2 million dollars at an auction. Why did anyone buy this letter? It’s because this is real, authentic and genuine. We gravitate towards the real, because in a world drowned by fiction and lies, we hold on to the truth as hard as we can.

Anyone can write the theory of relativity, but only a few pieces of paper exist where the man who discovered the theory of relativity also writes it down. So you get to own the story.

I think that’s it. It’s about owning the story.

But that got me thinking. We have stories too. We keep mundane things that add meaning to our lives because they hold a story of their own, a story that no one else can truly know.

I have this book, a Pixar Pedia. I don’t think you can buy them any more, and I certainly don’t read it any more, but I still keep it. It’s obsolete and the Internet at large has replaced it, but this Pixar Pedia holds meaning to me. To anyone else it’s just a gigantic, beaten up and battered book that holds too many Pixar facts than anyone really needs to know.

But not for me, when I look at my Pixar Pedia, I see a 5-year-old me reading it. The awe in my eyes, discovering the joy of reading, the joy of learning and the joy of stories. I think if you want to look at where I became the person I am today, look there.

The book has mostly been replaced by the speed of the internet, but no matter how much technology advances. I’ll hold on to this book, it’s a memento of my past, to remind me that deep down inside, I still am that 5-year-old kid.

I think this is beautiful. The fact that humanity, even after conquering the heavens above and the oceans below, we still do what we did as cavemen huddled around a makeshift fire, we told stories. And we still do, we still rely on stories to make sense of the world, to hold on to the people we care about and to learn how to be better people. And I think that’s something worth wondering about.