Story to Tell

Judge J.F.: “Give me an example of contributory negligence.”

K.T.” “Okay. Well, let’s say you’re driving a car, and you drive it into a building, and you sue the building owner. Since it was your negligence that caused your accident, you’d be barred from recovering.”

Judge J.F.: “A bit extreme, but I see your point.”

Most people give plausible hypotheticals. I relive Twisted Metal.

***

M.N. and I were talking about paper writing and research. He took the stance that much of the available research on many topics has been done, so it would be difficult to come up with something new. Instead, the key in writing a research paper is to tell a story, and throw in as many details as possible. From there, he came to the conclusion that few people could actually be good at writing papers, because people aren’t storytellers anymore.

I come in with my irrational “anyone can do anything” attitude and posit that if they’re properly trained and motivated, people can become storytellers. I don’t know if this is true, there are some really stupid people out there, at all levels of society. However, I’d like to believe that buried in our genetic heritage is the capability to tell a story, and tell it well.

It comes down to finding a topic you’re passionate about, and just letting that energy flow through your story. So, there is a possibility that people can’t tell stories, if they are dead inside, and have no passions to follow. Look at burned out crackheads. I wonder if there’s enough in them beyond the lust for that next hit off the crack pipe to string together any passion, much less a sentence, much less a story. Then again, you wonder if they’ve forsaken their base humanity to follow their animal instincts.

I’ve probably mentioned this point way too much by now, but it stands near or at the core of my basic beliefs about humanity. We are all giant bundles of potential, blessed and cursed with the capability to do anything and everything. Whether we actually succeed or not depends on the outer stresses and strains that lean on us, but there remains within us that possibility, that x-factor, that allows for wonder.