Of stories and storytellers...
For ages have the questions beguiled us of whence have we come, what are we here for and where shall we go. While the mysteries at the extremities might still retain their elusiveness for some time, I hazard an answer to the medial enquiry --we are here to tell stories.
The pinnacle of evolution, nature's very own pièce de résistance, has been consciousness. Qualia, the raw emotion perceived or experienced, splits us into two selves --the Greater Self : that which is in terms of nerve cells and circuitry; and the Evanescent Self : that which makes each of us, a distinct 'me'. While the theory of evolution has been explained in terms of genetic selection, environmental adaptation and even the anomalous though fortuitous occurrence of preadaptation, it has yet to account for or explain the emergence of consciousness.
I see an apple. It reminds me of Zach 'J.D.' Braff's appletinis from the television series, Scrubs. The song, I'm no Superman plays in my head. Damn, Justice League starts in ten on Cartoon Network.
A fruit fly, when it detects an apple, registers "food".
This indulgence in seemingly random yet concomitant thoughts is a phenomenon that has been contrived by evolution to serve, protect and, when necessary, deceive an otherwise mechanical organism. Consciousness is the story-teller. Beliefs, biases, perceptions, denials --reality-- are its stories. Are we the story-tellers or are we the stories told?
Now let's take another thread.
When a primordial soup churned and unchurned to gradually procreate without precursor, there it began to tell a story of life; that after excessive efforts culminated in the telling of story of unicellular organisms. The multi-celled bacterium took up the mantle to continue to tell the story. The Human body is made up of millions (or is it billions?) of cells. Mitochondria are integral constituents of human cells. But these mitochondria are bacterial entities that gave up their independence, millions (or is it billions, again?) of years ago. When man became a part of the story, he began to tell it, too. In Maya, Jostein Gaarder says, "The applause for the Big Bang was heard only fifteen billion years later." The popular Gaia theory propounds that the earth (or Gaia) is itself an organism. As the mitochondrion to man, so may man someday be to Gaia. Maybe the applause was a little premature. Maybe the story is yet to conclude. Maybe the plot is far from unraveled. Maybe it has only just begun.
As Ira Glass says, "Great stories happen to those who can tell them." This paradoxical implication presents both hope and warning. Our lives are the stories we live. In Troy, Achilles tells Briseis, "The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again." Each moment is a story itself. Is it a story worth telling? But more importantly, is it a story worth living? Answering to the former is conjecture. But experiencing the latter is truth.
From stories we come, stories we live and to stories we go.

Comments (0)
Leave a comment...