Author: William Sheets

After reading the two articles about the connections between storytelling and memory, I believe that memory has a huge impact on our identities and the people that we are. Which means that storytelling does too. By telling stories about our past and forcing ourselves to recollect important moments of our lives, we learn more about ourselves. It makes sense to me that by then telling other people about our memories in the form of a story will only solidify the lessons we’ve learned for our memories.

This could even go beyond personal examination as, like the Los Angeles Times article suggests, listening and telling stories can teach us about the people around us and the culture we inhabit. By thinking about which memories and stories stand out to us, we can evaluate what events, ideas, people, and places are the most important to us, or whoever else is telling a story.

In reading these two articles, I was forced to think about how essential memory is to the person I am. My memories of time with my family and friends can tell me about why I enjoy certain activities or pastimes. Memories of bad experiences can tell me about why I don’t like specific things or ideas. My memories are much more important to the person I am than I thought they were, and by telling other people about them in the form of a story, I, in tandem with the listener, can begin to understand more about the person I am.

When I was younger, I spent my summers at a nature camp, hiking in the woods, playing in streams, and having fun outside. I had a great time, but the point of the camp was to educate, not just entertain, so there were times when my fellow campers and I had some sort of task to accomplish or mission to complete.

One such mission was given to me when I was about ten years old. Some of my friends and I were playing in the woods per usual, when our counselor called us over and told us that he wanted us to make a fire. That usually wouldn’t have been too hard of a task, as we all had been doing similar things at that camp for years. However, the night before, it had rained pretty heavily, so most the sticks we collected were wet.

It took us about twenty minutes, but eventually we found enough material to start the fire. There was some debate about the type of fire structure we should build, but in the end we figured out what would work best with the materials we had and got the fire going.