“It is not that we will one day not know how to tell a story, but that one day we will no longer know how to listen to a story.”
~ Carmen Deedy
The places where stories get told—person to person, human to human—are disappearing. Family dinners where stories are told at the end of the day? Social places like coffee houses become drive-thru? The world is changing to a fast-paced multi-media world of sights and sounds where the entertainment is poured out of the screens that we cannot live without.
In the restaurant, I see tables where everyone is checking their phones. At the beach, I see people sit together—separated by the phones that they are staring into. The phone rings and attention shifts in a room as everyone checks their phone. Machines are disconnecting us.
The magic of story is the connection that science now calls “neural coupling.” That human to human connection happens when one person tells a story and the rest of the room is completely in sync, actively listening. Even I am guilty of talking on the phone while multi-tasking between three different things. Am I really listening? Maybe I’m in a conversation, looking for the place to insert myself. Am I really listening? Or I’m just talking to hear my own voice and not paying attention to the people around me, not engaging them. Am I really listening?
The power of story is the power of human connection. A story asks us to stop and listen. A story asks us to stop and connect. A story asks us to be human.
Imagine a world without story, a world where we lose our capacity to listen, and you imagine a world in which we lose our humanity.