storytelling

The story is the way the story is told.

Sendak understood that stories can be scary. He believed that we should all—kids and adults alike—experience stories that deliver encounters with all the emotions available to us; that scary stories are how we become prepared for any eventuality. Indeed, this is the very reason we need stories. We don’t do well with uncertainty, and so we seek out

Stories are a calm anchor amid the storm of uncertainty. And in uncertain in-between times, the stories we tell ourselves are powerful frameworks that help us work out who we are in the present moment and what we value. They lure us into becoming our aspirational selves.

Listen! This is how stories used to begin. It is the opening word of Beowulf , the oldest piece of English literature. We don’t know who wrote it, but it almost certainly began as an oral tradition, and it reveals something about storytelling that has never left us. It begins with a call, with a bard asking a crowd to give freely a resource that h