Where there is perfection, there is no story to tell

The story has instituted itself as the most relaxed, the most prolific, and perhaps the easiest way to communicate.  It provides mental maps that allow you to be familiar with significant elements, and how things are to be accomplished. It gives you the power to view your business and life concerns as a series of narratives rather than unconnected, accidental occurrences. The story can be directed, redirected or completely altered. It is carved from an experience built in recognizable patterns and what are obvious using images that are magical and easy to understand.

“Storytelling is the way you connect, the way you turn the world from a formless space that stretches in all directions into a space that holds your friends, your family, your community, including quiet moments that are the true connections between you and the world,” said Brian Andreas, author and artist of Story People, an anthology of idiosyncratic tales that appear on “StoryPeople,” wood sculptures created by Andreas from old railing wood, and accompanied by many artworks that are just as idiosyncratic. The tome provides easy-to-digest, commonsense, heartfelt, achingly poignant and witty insights that inform, inspire, and intrigue.

Many of the stories in Story People are abbreviated, but they all have the elements needed for a fuller version. “Kind of like one of those little sponge characters that expand to a hundred times the original size once you add water,” Andreas cited. All you need is a lot of creativity and imagination. And with your participation in the re-creation or expansion of a story, it becomes your own as you inject in it parts of yourself to make it come alive. Here are samples of the stories, which this writer expanded using related quotes:

Liberating at the top. You carried a ladder almost everywhere you went and after a while people left all the high places to you. It can be quite isolating to be up there but it can be energizing if you help somebody get there.

Loving the thief. When you lived in the city, you used to leave the lights on to keep away the burglars. Now you leave the lights off to keep away the neighbors. Your mom said it’s because there’s always a chance you’ll like the burglars.

Being in control. If you hold on to the handle, it’s easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it’s more fun if you just let the wind carry you. As Emmanuel Teney uttered, “As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit.”

Wisdom at any age. Older doesn’t mean wiser. Sometimes it simply means older. You may learn wisdom three ways, Confucius shared: “First by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest, and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

Going back to basics. Life was so much easier when you were simple-minded. It has taken you a lifetime to understand what it means. Look around you, Amelia Barr observed: “It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.”

Knowing what is right. You’re not so good at taking your own advice, but that doesn’t mean you don’t know what’s right. But, as Theodore Roosevelt declared, “Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.”

Adhering to your principles. Victor Hugo advised, “Change your opinions, keep to your principles, change your leaves, and keep intact your root. There are times you think you’re doing things on principle, but mostly you just do what feels good. But that’s a principle, too.

Collecting your eternal reward. Of course you believe in heaven, as your grandmother used to say. There’s got to be some reward for living with your grandfather all these years. “Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven,” Henry Ward Beecher declared.

Living in the dark. You can be in the dark on all but the most important things, and it’s not such a bad thing because you don’t see a lot of the stuff you usually get anxious about.

Being in your comfort zone. Whenever you go on a trip, you think about all the homes you’ve had, and you remember how little has changed about what comforts you.

Taking care of yourself. There are days you drop words on yourself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by yourself. Max Ehrmann articulated, “Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.”

Celebrating birthdays. When people ask how old you are, you would say, “1009365” more or less because you are so glad to be alive that you count every day a birthday. You have some disagreement from your knees about the actual figure, though. Oh, well. “All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much,” George Harrison sang.

Being a crowd by yourself. You always camouflaged yourself as a crowd. You’ve never been lonely, but sometimes it’s hard to think above the noise. Fiona Apple remarked, “When you’re surrounded by all these people, it can be even lonelier than when you’re by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don’t feel like you can trust anybody or talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone.”

Recognizing your angels of mercy. Most people don’t know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don’t get too comfortable and fall asleep and miss your life. In truth, Luciano De Crescenzo reminded, “We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.”

Enjoying a bittersweet life. Jack Kirby said, “Life at best is bittersweet.” You usually cried at least once each day not because you were sad, but because the world was so beautiful and life was short.

Waiting for signs. You said to wait for a sign before you did anything. Then one night you had a dream and an angel in black tights came to you and said, “You can start any time now and then you asked, is this a sign? And the angel started laughing and you woke up. Now you think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there’s no laughter, you know they’re not for you.

Being ready for anything. If you made sure you had clean underwear in case you got in an accident, you always figured that’d be the least of your worries. But now you’re older and you see there’s a lot you can’t control and some you can control and clean underwear is one of those you can (at least, for the most part).

Finding your center. You spend a long time trying to find it until you looked closely at it one night and found it had wheels and moved easily in the slightest breeze. So now you spend less time sitting and more time sailing. “At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want,” Lao Tzu opined.

Managing your own morale. You waved at all the people on the train and later, when you saw they didn’t wave back, you started singing songs to yourself and it went that way the whole day and you couldn’t remember having a better time in your life. “Know thyself,” Socrates said, and you will be okay.

Growing up right. When you were five, your family forgot and left you at the fair. You wandered around in the bright sounds and smells of hot sawdust and cotton candy for hours. It was too late by the time your parents found you. You haven’t been fit for decent society since.

“Stories are a lot like going through a photo album. They mark specific moments and ways of being in your life. Taken on their own, they are reminders of those times,” Andreas revealed. The thing that does change for him is the overall arc of the stories when he puts them together. And when he reads a group of his stories, he gets a sense of where they’ve been leading him, what they’ve been wanting him to understand the whole time. That changes through time and through the addition of further stories along the way.

The fact of storytelling, Ben Okri hypothesized, “Hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection, there is no story to tell.”

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