The Reality of Stories
I love stories.
I love their structure, their fluidity, their scope, their power.
Whether they’re in comic books or novels, in television shows or movies, in myths or legends, in holy scriptures or sacred texts, in simple speech or private thoughts… stories shape our lives.
I have given much thought to the nature of stories, partly as a result of my reading quite a bit of Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, and also due to my observations of how stories I tell myself affect my life.
For those who have not delved into this rich subject, here’s an example many of us will recognize from our youths: Santa Claus.
The Story of Santa Claus generally goes something like, Santa is a jolly older man who lives in the North Pole where his elves make toys for all the good boys and girls. On Christmas, he sneaks down your chimney (or finds some other way into your house if your home lacks a chimney, I guess) to deliver the goods, and he does this for all the homes in the world in one magical night.
That is a story. Whether it’s a true story or not doesn’t matter… it’s the belief in the story that makes it real.
Believing in Santa will get kids to behave, and it can even lead to some group delusions (remind me to tell you about the time my cousins and I saw Rudolf’s red nose flying through the air on a snowy night in Pennsylvania… including my oldest cousin who had already stopped believing in Santa).
So, belief in a story has real-world consequences.
Now, what happens when the story is more powerful than Santa? Perhaps we will use the number of believers and/or the fervency of belief as indicators of power, in this case.
What happens when the story is that of Jesus?
“Now, wait a minute,” I hear some of you say, “Jesus isn’t a story, he’s real!”
I started with Santa Claus because he’s somewhat innocuous and easily discussed as a story. Jesus most certainly is spiritually real for many, simply human for others, and there are likely quite a few on this planet who do not know his story at all… at least not specifically, although we won’t pull that thread quite yet.
So, looking at Jesus as a story is in no way meant to question anyone’s belief or lack thereof in him… this is a neutral exploration of the Story of Jesus.
For those of the Christian faith, the Story of Jesus is the same as the Spiritual Truth of Jesus… for them the story is real and true.
For others, the Story of Jesus is a story, and sometimes that story becomes true and sometimes it stops being true.
What does that mean?
Well, if you have ever lost or found your faith, you may know that your belief in a story can change. Santa may have stopped being real and true, but he’s still a story. Whether Jesus is true or not for you doesn’t stop him from being a story, either.
What I wonder about is whether we can make stories true by believing in them enough? Does it matter if Jesus was ever real if enough people believe he was? Does it matter if Jesus was the Son of God if enough people now believe he is?
In Grant Morrison’s Supergods, he discusses the worlds where comic book characters live in paper universes that a writer such as himself can explore by donning a “Fiction Suit”. In essence, you can wrap yourself in a story, put some of your consciousness into it, and off you god… I mean “go”.
However, as Morrison details, exploring paper universes can have real-world consequences… the energies can bleed through. His example is that when the character he used to explore the paper universe became trapped, Morrison’s real-life body became ill, and he had to find ways both for his character and himself to escape their predicaments, as they were tied together.
What I see in this is that stories can affect the real-world… whether they’re “real” or not is irrelevant. The power of belief can make a story real, regardless of its veracity.
And so, with Santa and Jesus, they have real-world effects regardless of any notion of truth… and the power of their stories can bleed through into this world and shape it like any other story can.
For me, this implies that there is a lot of power in our capacity to believe… to have faith… to imagine… and to create, which is in essence turning a story into reality.
What then for those who fervently believe in a Second Coming of Jesus or of an Apocalypse or Revelation (redundant, I know)? Perhaps their faith is a catalyst for something along those lines to occur. Or perhaps their desire to believe will be used by someone who knows how to manipulate stories…
As a psychic, I spend much of my time looking at these interstitial points between imagination and reality, and at how what we believe shapes our realities.
As an avid reader and consumer of narratives, I also see how enmeshed our world is with that of stories.
It is with this perspective that I leave you for today with what is meant as both cautionary and hopefully empowering words:
Be mindful of your beliefs… you just might make them real.