We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.
Interpretation
Stories help us make sense of our troubles and beliefs.
William Kittredge's quote emphasizes the significance of storytelling in processing our life's challenges and experiences. By sharing and listening to stories, we find coherence in our struggles, recognize our values, and confront the darker aspects of our lives, suggesting that narratives are essential to not only understand ourselves but also to maintain our sanity amidst chaos.
In practice
In a therapy session, a counselor could use this quote to emphasize the importance of narrative in healing.
It is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership.
Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
Feminism has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually - women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority.
If you want to know everything about the market, go to the beach. Push and pull your hands with the waves. Some are bigger waves, some are smaller. But if you try to push the wave out when it's coming in, it'll never happen. The market is always right.
Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world - including in my own country.
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