We all need answers and we are looking for them in a tremendous madness like someone who has lost a magic ring. Why this, why that, why he loves me, hates me, pays me, looks at me, how do I perform better at work, what is behind death, is the earth round or convex... Beyond the questioning that invades us, whether it is absurd or not, it is the stories that best fill our desire to know.
We have explained everything from the story, oral or written, and we have structured ourselves socially around the fire (I like the image of the community gathered around the fire, it is something that leads me to the magical and primal). It does not matter if a concrete answer is required that is based on verifiable data or if the alternative to achieve momentary peace of that curiosity to know is resolved with concepts that are supported by other concepts, what matters is that the speech gives you a feeling of conclusive rest.
In some cases, science gives us a more convincing, "rational" story that seems to last until a better one comes along and replaces it. Example: the earth was flat and then round, then they showed us a thousand times that it is round. In other cases we voluntarily choose to forget about science to bet on the fantastic, because simply this, implausible or crazy, fills us with greater happiness. Long live the convex earth!
This need for answers is often supported by the oral narrator, the storyteller, the writer, storyteller, griot, rhapsode, palabrero, bard, troubadour, aedo, paye, priest, minstrel, storyteller... There are so many similar words that show us the never absent role of the individual who stands as an ambassador of the word and at the same time possessor of a truth. Of course, I speak of a truth that is based on the story itself and that will never require a different approval than that provided from the configured world itself. Who can deny that Little Red Riding Hood came out of the Wolf's belly alive? What's more, who can deny that the Wolf is left alive and suffering from indigestion after such a patching of his belly? No one, because in that forest, in that world, that is absolutely possible.
In this way, without asking for it, without wanting it, without approving it, we fall into the jaws of stories always fed by ourselves (it is impossible to stop thinking about Yuval, in his book Sapiens). How can we forget the stories that were created in Europe and that traveled through the West in the form of orality and writing? How can we get Jonas spit on a beach or Geppetto's Pinocchio out of our minds? Impossible! As impossible as getting out of our heads that Sinbad the sailor, Ali Baba and the forty thieves or Aladdin are part of the Arabian Nights; although from the beginning they never were. And this forcefulness is what calls us to choose the story of Perez the Mouse over a child's fallen tooth; before a gift under the tree, the story of cooperation between the Child God and Santa Claus.
Because the stories will never be erased from us, because they are part of ourselves, they made us what we are and they will haunt us until life is gone or memory is erased.
I remember the story of a man who told stories every day under a tree and was only listened to by a child. One day the boy became a man and went to say goodbye to the old man because he was leaving town. After saying goodbye, the young man finally left the town and before being lost forever he wanted to take one last look at the old man. Then he saw him, still under the tree, telling his stories. He couldn't resist and returned again, only to ask the storyteller one last question: why did he continue telling if he, who was the only one whose attention he had paid him in so many years, was already leaving town forever? Then the old man answered that he would continue telling stories so that the wind, from time to time, would carry his words to the man who was now leaving, so that he would never forget the boy who had lived in that town. At what point do we stop honoring the child we were and his dreams full of stories?
At this point I could dare to say that for a moment the image of the old man and the young man invaded all my thoughts. Now, if what I assume is true, why do we value the importance of the storyteller in this series of stories and at the same time underestimate the power of stories in our daily lives? Of course, apart from those who transformed their speech into power thanks to the origin of the religious or political institutional, an undeniable link also from the beginning because the rite and myth gave the position and power to the palabrero, where lies the role of the storyteller in society contemporary?
A long time ago we decided to dedicate ourselves to orality and formed Santa Palabra, and the decision has left us with several lessons. We have enjoyed reaching unthinkable scenarios, management meetings, annual conventions, ambassador summits, weddings, degrees, and in each of those interventions we have asked ourselves if the phenomenon is valued by all attendees, if the listener allows the words to arrive to sow mental images that stop time. This question helps us improve, to direct many of our decisions. Of course, the basis of every movement is to be happy with what one does, but there is also the commitment to keep alive a tradition that for many has lost relevance, because the wind never carried them the words of a storyteller.
If what we do today is the best way to maintain a tradition: we don't know. Whether implementing technology at the service of an audience's encounter with the storyteller is appropriate or sacrilege: we do not know either. If the decision to start a company to guarantee ideal scenarios that understand the dignified development of the profession is another crazy act: who dares to judge us if it is a success. This series of doubts has never paralyzed us and has often helped us direct our work and be at the forefront. Stopping to meditate has helped us better understand how we performed the miracle among so many presentations. That doubt (Socratic, by the way), has also given us a bit of calm between the danger that comes with praise and the poise necessary to continue doing what we love and learning.
It is for this reason that we will continue telling stories, telling stories, in Cali, in Colombia, in every virtual setting where a Spanish speaker receives us. And if he doesn't speak Spanish, we will talk to him from the gesture, but we will continue sitting under the tree, telling stories. Because we signed up for this cause and because in each encounter there is the opportunity to recognize ourselves, to laugh, to dream collectively with people we barely see, to achieve in each event a successful experience and a party of words that makes us understand that, beyond entertainment, the storyteller takes care of the path that takes us from children to old people.
Of course, at this point in the text there is another reasonable doubt: How long has it been since they told you a story? If it was a long time ago, perhaps it is time to make peace with the storyteller.