The Power of Storytelling: The Stories We Tell and How They Affect Us

Winter - Spring 2023

The Power of Storytelling:

and How They Affect Us

Source: https://literariness.org/2017/04/26/the-philosophical-concept-of-rhizome/

They say
a picture tells
a thousand* (1,000)
words.

It's true. And what about a story that paints a thousand pictures through sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell?

Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
*thou·sand /ˈTHouz(ə)n(d)/ Learn to pronounce
number
the number equivalent to the product* of a hundred and ten; 1,000.
"a thousand meters"
Similar: K thou chiliad

*product: "The term "product" refers to the result of one or more multiplications." (source)

the numbers from one thousand to 9,999.
plural noun: thousands
"the cost of repairs could be in the thousands"
INFORMAL
an unspecified large number.
noun: thousand; plural noun: thousands
"we will meet thousands of people when we go to college"

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A Story

How to Revolve Through Grassroots Community Participation and Storytelling

Join the movement sweeping the

world to connect, once and for

all. People who love peace and

people and all beings, people who

love the Earth, people who love and

understand and strive to understand

and work together in life!

Source: https://roamad.blog/gwanaksan-2/

Well, it felt good to cry that out, as if I were standing at the top of Gwanak-san (Gwanak Mountain). If I never physically got to the top of that mountain, I certainly did a hundred times in my imagination, and I just did again now.

What did you think when you read those words in the block quote above? And the title (which you read) before it? Were you doubtful? Perhaps doubtful of what the intentions of this piece of writing were? Or did you recognize immediately what was being spoken of—perhaps you exclaimed, "Yeah, I love that movement! Those are my people!"—or did you feel a little surprise that gave way to pleasure to learn/know that such a movement existed?

Have you had that experience of learning that something wonderful that you had never imagined before existed?

It has always been. I just hadn't experienced it yet, and
I didn't think to look for it or know how to. [*]

This is how experience and imagination can work, sometimes suddenly and sometimes over time, expanding our world into a whole new space with new/more / we dare say infinite possibilities.

However, left unattended, the imagination can participate in narrowing and constricting our world, drawing us along with stories and places and states of being that we are accustomed to, or that we are in the middle of experiencing (in the case of new and short-term experiences as well as long-term experiences). We fill in the rest, and we accept the world around us (for survival and because of hardwiring, among other reasons), and the world informs the stories we tell ourselves, and often the words and kinds of words that we use.

Within this context of being (left) unattended, the imagination often gets locked into the current of what we might call "the mainstream" ways of thinking and seeing things (mainstream perspectives) that are mainstream not because they are beneficial to humans, but because of arbitrary/random assignment. When this happens, we get locked into the mainstream way of thinking, too, along with our imagination, often without realizing it. This is an expected, expectable result of living among narratives that are repeated and developed over and over again in all sorts of media, often for nefarious (criminal) purposes.

The problem is that we need more tools to counterbalance the onslaught of the negative and corrupting forces that our system perpetuates, and eventually to push back against these forces and calm them to healing, as we would a rash that causes us perpetual discomfort and damage to our well-being until the root causes are addressed.

In the present state of the world, we are missing (and missing out on) so much of what is possible—what we can do and be and become—in our individual lives as well as in our collective lives. (//)

The good news it that the mainstream is revolving, for lack of a better word. (If you have suggestions for another word, please share.)

as if
used in a simile
to imagine and/or describe

This is (an example of)
a block quote.

Ellipsis
Example:
I didn't think to look for it or know how to (look for it).

Expandable:
. . . "the mainstream" ways of thinking and seeing things (mainstream perspectives) that are mainstream not because they are beneficial to humans, but because of arbitrary/random assignment.

For example, some patriarchal societies argue that men should be the heads of households, but we can understand this as a cultural assignment/designation/naming when we realize that in many cultures of the world, it is actually women who run households and make many of the household rules.

Note:
In this example, "argue" is similar in meaning to "assign"/"designate", but is used in a different grammatical structure.
(More coming soon.)

- Source: Click on the image. -

In basketball terms (and in the lingo of many sports), we are pivoting and moving in a new direction, and in geometry and quantum physics analogies (?), we are jumping axes:

axes, plural of axis:
an imaginary line about which a body rotates.
(Oxford Languages)

http://clipart-library.com/clipart/xyz-cliparts_18.htm

We are jumping from a limited axis (singular)
that we have been revolving around
(with a centre that has been ravaged and devastated through the corrupting greed for money and power of, and the ensuing/resulting exploitation of others by, the super-greedy within a conceptually weak and vacuous framework of hierarchy - click here for more on this),

to a much stronger and life-sustaining growing set of axes (multiple) with a core of love and good faith, which we are increasingly revolving around.

On these axes, with this core, we have access to a limitless expansion of well-being, interconnectedness, and personal and collective growth.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

To be continued . . .

This page is growing. It may transform as it grows. Please come back again in 2024 to see this page grow.

Last updated March 2023

once and for all — an interesting word (expression / unit of meaning)

Its dictionary definition is "now and for the last time; finally", and adding to this definition, Oxford Languages suggests the following "Similar" words: conclusively, decisively, finally, positively, absolutely, and determinedly.

If we decide to do something "once and for all" for the rest of our lives, then we can understand that time is not linear, but rather it is embedded in us, the way we think, the way we act, and the way we unfold the ever-developing now.

Back to "Stories"

On the Horizon:

- More on the stories we tell and how they affect us

- The Intersection of Fiction and Non-Fiction
Can you step into your own story and write a happy now?