Storytelling

Humans have the gift of a complex language and one of the benefits of this gift is storytelling. Our ability to use words to give detailed descriptions of past events, allows us to invite our audience into our lives. The words, especially adjectives, enhance, often exaggerate the magnitude of these events, but they also add tension, excitement, and most of all charm. The ability to use language to enthrall another is a special gift. This ability is not as common as one may think. 

Many people are said to have the gift of gab, but I find it to be a rarity. Knowing which section of a story to put emphasis on is easy because it is the reason we're telling the story. Knowing how to build up to it is the real gift. Some people (most) put so much effort into the buildup we're well aware of what they had for breakfast and decided to wear, while we wait for the meat of the story. They spend so much time on insignificant aspects of life, that one begins to wonder if this event really held such importance as they would have you believe. A thirty-degree day and one which is seventy holds little importance when telling of running errands. The time in which you awakened matters not when the story is about your dinner unless this is when you began to cook. Recently, I've paid much more attention to people's stories, because I come in contact with much fewer people than I once did. The simple lack of stories I hear makes their importance to me much greater. I appreciate them more, even when they are told inefficiently and without holding my interest as entertainment. While I reason all story's significance is far greater to the person telling than to anyone in the audience, but when one os made to hear said story in a repetitive fashion, one can grow weary with the addition of details which are not pertinent. 

I've also come to realize this is one of the rare circumstances within human behavior where intelligence matters very little. While the words that are chosen can inflate or deflate the story's impact, it's the ability to pick and choose the highlights that really make or break the impact. It's this ability that can make a story that has no relevance in our own lives, shine. It's this inability that can make something completely relatable, a chore to listen to. Some can tell stories in such a fashion we believe they're fiction, even when we know they are fact. It can be beautiful, even melodic, and the storyteller's enthusiasm becomes infectious. We look forward to seeing them and hearing them even more. It's similar to the ability to write and why some writers resonate with us, while others' are difficult to finish. We all crave something to relate to and even more so, something we can share with another, and stories, even the most mundane, can hold great importance, even fun, when told the right way. We'd all like to think we're interesting and while it's true we all have fables and anecdotes that are similar, it's that ability to make them sound unique that is truly an art form.