Story Matters: They distract us from reality
By Steven Balakrishna.
From slaying dragons in fantasy realms to gushing over unconditional romance; from same ending clichés to unexpected resolutions; from the edge of the seat of suspense to the unforeseen plot twist, action, drama whatever it may be: stories hold a unique power that portals us to alternate universes, with only the use of words. One of the main sources of limitless imaginations, stories create a reservoir of entertainment to escape the mundane reality we live in.
The “rat race” introduced in the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, a well known businessman that provides personal finance and business education, talks about an endless, self-defeating or pointless pursuit. The phrase alludes to humans as rats, attempting to earn a reward such as cheese with an endless cycle of working. The term is frequently connected with a demanding monotonous lifestyle that allows little opportunity for relaxation or enjoyment. Most humans live in a similar cycle, from finishing high school, attending college, to working 9 to 5, 7 days a week, just to gain a minimum financial support to live a normal life. When looking at the world, we look at it from a unfiltered point of view. Either everyone is insensitive to the beautiful colors of the world or that the world is slowly decaying. Such factors make life dull and tyrannical.
Story illustrates a rather different view than what we see in reality. Therefore, we seek this type of entertainment. Living in an environment not well suited for comfort, people tend to seek what is unattainable in reality but accessible in stories. In reality, we only live one life, but with books, we have the capability to live millions. We often put ourselves in the shoes of the main character, or even the antagonist, finding attributes that relate with ours, enabling us to engage more with the story as it moves along the plot. Compared to the world we live in, we see colors with our own eyes, and everything seems a bit grayer as the world decays. In books, we read the colors that describe the setting and our limitless imagination leads us to romanticization, bringing more meaning to life than reality generally takes for granted. So in short, our imagination when we read colors in books surpasses what we can see in reality. Stories also provide experiences that are impossible to come across in real life that makes it so addicting to read. For example, fighting wizards…. Or falling in random holes. All of these cut above the experiences we gain in this earthly world.
Traveling through a desert, known as reality, we long for water in order to quench our thirst, water being stories. We quest for this reservoir of entertainment to fulfill the desperations of living and unattainable life.