The Power of Storytelling

Have you thought about this in the past? The image of every nation or institution comes into existence through storytelling. Look at it thias way: everything you think you know about this or that nation’s strength comes from the way the nation tells the story of its civilization. This is why the smarter the storytelling capacity of a nation, the convincing and more beautiful their history sounds. And, though to tell the story of a nation, there ought to be facts and historical events to talk about, some nations are better equipped in selling their own story. And funny enough, it is, in certain cases, not because they have better stories but because they have better storytellers.

This is why some presidents travel with a very big and competent media entourage. They make sure that both within and outside their country, they have well-formed journalists who continuously sell the national image to the entire world.

Religion also is more often about storytelling. It is one of the places where storytelling is capital in the vitality, or better said, the veracity of its image. Every strong religion has better storytellers, and not forcefully better God-experience.

Look around you, your ancestors have been relating with God or gods, but who wrote all we know about their religious experience? You see why Chinua Achebe was not wrong when he said: “as long as the story of hunting continues to be told by the hunters, the animals will always be the losers in the hunting narrative.”

Think about the people of Israel. How did they know about the creation sequence even though no one was present during the creation period? Who was taking note of what took place during the passage of the Red Sea, or even during the flood?

Fast word to the New Testament composition and compilation. Assuming there weren’t the later great storytellers like Paul and the other New Testament authors, would we have learnt much from the illiterate Apostles Jesus surrounded himself with?

So, what do you know about your people, for example? Do you think your kindred have no heroes and heroines? The only reason why your village appears ordinary to you and might continue to appear so to the generations to come is that no good storyteller has considered your family resilience worth talking about.