People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.
-- Joseph Campbell
And this may be one of the reasons human beings in every culture, through all time, have told and loved stories. Sure, stories can instruct us in how to behave, and provide explanations for the way things are, but there's also something in stories that isn't about meaning. We don't read or listen to stories, or watch stories on movie and television screens only in order to extract a meaning from them, but to have more life. To make our own lives wider, deeper, richer, by experiencing the lives lived by people in stories. With stories we get to live many lives, many lifetimes, within one.
Photo: Canada Day, Edmonton, by T Wharton
2 comments:
That's a cool little photo.
People waiting for the fireworks. I like the cross-section of ages, and the preponderance of red, which I enhanced by fiddling with hue & saturation.
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