The World Is Built Out of Stories

The world we live in is built out of story.

When we moved on from the trees and the mountains and the fields and into homes and cities, we built them out of story. Tales of who we are, how we live and love and breed.

We left “nature” behind and wove a new narrative.

Everything is story.

Blue is for boys and pink is for girls.

Love belongs to two people under God.

Work is done Monday to Friday.

School is where you learn how to operate in the world and if that system doesn’t work for you, there is something wrong with your brain.

We made it all up.

We had our reasons. Those stories served us at the time.

Or, those stories served the people who held the power, and that was that.

But the time has come to dismantle old stories and tell new ones.

There is no separation between us and the earth and the narratives and myths that define us. We are an ecosystem undivided.

If we want to sustain human life, we must leave stories rooted in conflict behind.

I know how much we yearn for a simple, singular narrative.

We don’t want it to be messy or complex.

But it is.

We have the tools at our disposal to create a society where everyone is taken care of.

It’s the trauma of colonialism and the refusal to acknowledge white supremacy within our systems and structures that holds us back.

It’s this trauma that flattens the world, that tells us “it’s complicated” so we don’t even try to understand.

When there is nothing to understand but pain.

And the actions that stem from it.

Ending the conflicts that hold us all prisoner starts by embracing this truth:

There is no truth. There are only stories.

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