Some books can profoundly change us. They give us new perspectives or remind us of something we hold dear. They open our eyes to what has been in front of us all along. They help us realize who we are.
Of course, books are not written for you or me specifically. But that's why they matter. When their content resonates with us, we feel more connected to our shared human experience. Many forces are constantly trying to pull us apart and make us forget that we have so much in common.
Today's book is a powerful reminder of what it means to be human. We are all about stories.
Storyworthy, Matthew Dicks
We all have stories to tell. Our lives are filled with intriguing, novel, funny, absurd, or embarrassing moments. Storyworthy is about acknowledging these moments and looking at them through the lenses of a storyteller. They don't need to be dramatic or sensational. They just need to mean something to us.
Stories are an essential tenet of what makes us human. They allow us to share our conscious experiences and learn from each other. They are the currency of our collective wisdom.
But stories are not just anecdotes. Talking about your vacations in Florence and how exquisite the food was is not a story; it's an anecdote and probably not interesting to anyone but you. Stories are not about events or places. They are not even about people. They are about us, our journey in life. They are about how particular events affected us, those 5 second moments that changed us forever. Only we can tell about these moments. Nobody else can. That is also why we must tell our own stories and not the stories of others.
According to Dicks, to become good storytellers, we only need two things; sensibility to storyworthiness and technique. Both can be developed. And to that effect, Dicks shares many of the methods that helped him become an accomplished storyteller; "Homework for Life," "Crash and Burn," "First Last Best Worst," "Find the 5 second moment", etc., illustrating them with examples from his arsenal of contest-winning stories (yes, this is a thing). In fact, his fascinating stories alone are worth buying the book.
Reading Storyworthy made me realize that my everyday life was so much richer than I thought it was.
You may think that nothing is storyworthy in your life. Hopefully, this book can prove you otherwise. You have more stories in you than you think. And your stories matter because only you can tell them.