“Oh, to be a Storyteller”

A few weeks ago, I shared my retrospection of what I had gained from the storytelling programme I was soon to be graduating from, but I never told you what I had written at the beginning as I embarked on that year long journey to discover that part of myself I had so long denied.

As the world has now entered a new [Gregorian] year, and many are looking forward to what they want this year to be about, setting their goals to either lose that holiday weight, get that promotion, or buy a new house—I find it fitting to share those hopes I had upon entering the programme, even if I have already graduated.

Shall we see if I was right?

Storytelling is an ancient craft, one passed down from generation to generation over millennia. In the oral traditions of our forefathers, we explained the unknown mysteries of our universe and the secrets therein. Today, too, we are still telling stories; perhaps less of what is out there, as our world has expanded throughout the centuries, and more of what lies hidden within. We are still searching for truth, for connection, for belonging. We find it in stories. Thus, I think it impossible for anyone to not share a story.

What did you do today?”

Did you hear about Helen?”

Breaking news this evening…”

All of these are the beginnings of stories. Storytelling is embedded in our psyche as humans. It’s what makes us distinct from all other creatures, and to a select few it is an aspiration to achieve, to tell maybe not the perfect story, but the one which lives inside you, one which only you can tell.

There’s something ineffable about the budding sensation of a story. Its palatable tingles itch your fingers, urging you to either grasp your pen or stroke your keys, yet it is altogether intangible. The more you think of the story, the more it swirls within you, its effervescent eddies swelling until it is all but bursting out onto a page or from your mouth. A sort of crazed fever overcomes you until you cannot eat, cannot sleep, without researching, tinkering, scribbling like mad to release the building pressure inside, to share your story longing to be told.

Except sometimes, even in the heat of such passion, the swells simmer until they all but die, a story forgotten, abandoned. With no audience to hear the orators speech, he is, like Shakespeare brilliantly described, “An idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” His words die at their utterance with no one to listen.

A story must be told to live, and for a story to be told, there must be those who listen.

Desire is nothing without action. It is an empty, voidless sensation, whose intoxicating thrills too quickly sour into a bitter poison. I think I have dwelled too long in a realm of stagnation, restless and listless. I do not know if I am skilled or talented, but I want to be. I do not know if others will like my stories, but I need to tell them. To write is like oxygen, even amidst the throes which grip me when bringing a story to life, even if for now the only person who hears them is me.

Thus, perhaps it is not the skills nor knowledge I hope to gain, nor even the reassurance that I have a particular talent in this craft, this art, but more so than anything else I wish to embrace the part of myself I have too long denied. Amongst fellow peers whose souls, I like to think, crave what I crave—maybe here I can gain the confidence to be what I have always longed: a storyteller.