Son, reading is a journey to better your storytelling.
One of the most immeasurable benefits of daily journaling and blogging is the awareness of others that it creates in you.
Writing daily highlights the senses and pushes them to be more attuned to the notions and feelings of others. You catch simple throwaway phrases and see a story or an adaptation within the words. You hear whispers differently and notice subtle shifts in body language that helps an individual land a point or raise an argumentative agenda. You see how crowds move in unison, and you can spot the outliers in society that look at things a little bit differently. I love seeing these people – they are unconventional in a beautiful way.
You can not help but be impressed by everything you can see with your newfound eyes.
It is the same for reading. Writing forces you to be a better reader. Writing encourages you to appreciate words more and to wonder why a particular punctuation was chosen over another. Why a short sentence illustrates the passion and energy of the moment or the elaborately painted picture of a passage without a full stop that slows you down to the point of deeper contemplation. I search for the elusive why. Looking behind the sentences. I observe the story. I think. Reflect.
Life, It is all storytelling, and we are all storytellers. Everyone, it is how we communicate. Successful people tell the best stories, and they weave the skill of words and punctuation to their advantage. Many people are natural in their ability to tell a great yarn. Still, many have to learn the skill, and it should be encouraged as a life-long learning purpose throughout a person’s life.
We learn to tell stories from an early age, and we are encouraged to build on that skill as we move through our schooling. It is essential to be in classes and close to others because that is how we learn the human behaviours we need for our adult life. It is also super important to read. To understand and explore what we read, share our interpretations and grow our understanding of the structures and rhythms of life from books. This is why we should discuss books and share more. This is why your academic years are so important, Son.
The human interactions, the reading and the writing should all come together to collide and shape who we are. We should be on a continuous journey to build our storytelling technique. We will need this talent for so much of our adult life. We will need it for interviews, selling, networking, explaining our inventions, and presenting our marketing pitch to the audience clearly and effectively. Storytelling is an art form, and we, you, Son, need to keep it alive throughout your life because it will be the basis of your success.
Son, my beautiful, precious, smart and curious son. Keep reading, keep being curious and always be observing and refining what you see. Explore the stories in your head and practice telling them with enthusiasm and positive energy because that will set you apart.
What you know is valuable but how you prescribe it to your audience is priceless. So if I have ever told you to stop telling stories because that’s what parents do. Then ignore me, forget that. It is bad parenting on my part. Because storytelling is the basis of communities, and being part of a community is being a part of life.
Son. Tell stories. Tell me more stories. Make me laugh with your wild imagination as you did when you were five, and you were obsessed with Spider-Man and Lego.
Tell me again how you think a car engine works and how it would be simple to build a flying car. Tell me your version of Jack and the Beanstalk again and paint me that picture of what you would have done.
I loved your tirade of questions, Son, when you were growing up, but I loved your stories even more.
Be that artist again. Read and learn to tell great stories because that’s what adults do.
We all tell stories.
For All Life's Adventures 