I've Got A Little Story For You

Stories are powerful things. They define who we are, they are testaments to the fact that we have lived. I consider myself a lucky person for many reasons and one of those reasons is that I work somewhere where people have an overabundance of stories to tell. In fact it's my favorite part of my job. Everyday I have time to sit with my co-workers and share our stories. Some are funny, some are heartbreaking and some are just plain weird. But the fact remains, that everyday I get the chance to let people into my life, and in return they allow me into their lives.

I often think about the true power of a story. What about these little tidbits of our lives that we can vocalize or write down make stories truly great. To be honest I don't know if there's a true answer to that, but I can say that I have my own personal answers. Stories are powerful because like I said before, they define us. If we share enough stories with people, we're giving them the ability to track our lives all the way to where we are now. I have friends who have very specific personality traits, some of them pretty weird. But I can think back to the stories that they've told me and find a line that explains almost every quirk and trait. And once I understand these traits, I feel closer to my friends.

Also, stories are our marks on this world. They are our tiny little scratches into the big wall of history and the entirety of human existence. Now sure, my story about getting drunk for the first time and puking on my friends bed, may not make the history books. But, what it did do, was find a tiny corner in every person's brain that I told that story to. I can now feel comfortable that the fact of my existence will remain in that person's head. If I'm lucky, they'll retell that story to someone else. Maybe it'll stop there though, but I still find comfort that for at least a few days, there's someone out there who knows that I've had a past. Stories are our truest legacies. Some people believe that their children, and their children's children are their legacies. But that's not the case, because each one of those children will have their own stories and their own legacies to create. Our stories though, are ours they are things that we can pass down without any loss to ourselves, and without worry that they will fall off the counter and break into a thousand pieces.

Tell your stories, do things in your life that will ensure you have stories to tell. Let people into your life, pass on your legacy.