Writers can change the world. Because when everything seems too big to handle, and when world was just a touch too cruel to stomach down, we picked up books and we opened our televisions, and we tried to escape.
But the thing with escapism is that it’s often just a trick of the mind. The thing with escapism is that it’s never that easy to escape.
There are many ways to change the world. There is none. There is a contradiction sitting right in middle of our chest, beating furiously at every passing second when the balance tips in one direction or the other.
There is a contradiction that breathes the same air as we do and it’s been alive longer than we have. It’s called life. And time. And fate.
There are, sometimes, many ways to change the world, and at the same time, there is no way you can do so.
‘To survive you must tell stories.’
Umberto Eco
There are some things that just pass down through the generations. Some things grow with us. They evolved as we evolve and they become a part of us, to the point that we can’t exist without them.
Some things just embed themselves into our genetic structure, becoming an inseparable part of us through evolution and natural selection. For example—studies suggest that those of our ancestors who were anxious before getting into harmful situations were better prepared and cautious and therefore ended up not dying. This led to the survival of those of our ancestors who were reasonably anxious about some things, which passed down and eventually made our generations into the anxious people that we are.
This is a basic example. But consider storytelling. Why are we the storytellers that we are? Maybe those of our ancestors who told the tales of their adventures and listened to others tell similar stories learned from them and applied the knowledge they gained from them into practical life.
Maybe those of our ancestors who told stories ended up surviving better than the others. Maybe it’s a trait passed down through generations. To tell and listen and write and just make others understand what you feel, by whatever means possible. Maybe this imagination is something selected by nature. Maybe it is inherent. Maybe it is something you have as a human.
Whatever the reason may be, the conclusion stands that stories are something that belong in the human society.
‘I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.’
Jorge Luis Borges
We are an echo of all that has passed before us. In the words of Pablo Neruda, ‘What is life but a passing of bones…’
We live through all we perceive and all we experience. The world is a myriad of countless emotions, countless lives, countless stories. There lies a story in everything, sometimes buried deep down, sometimes floating on the surface. Stories are what shape us, and what makes us see things we couldn’t have otherwise. They make us witness lives, ages, generations. A few words, a hundred pages is all it takes to recount a lifetime.
Stories are how we make sense of the world. Isn’t history just a story, after all? Albeit a long, complex and sometimes even boring story. A story we’re still trying to write the happy ending of, but a story all the same.
Stories are how the world makes sense of us too. We’re all stories in the end. Long stories, short ones, some happier than the others, some decidedly more interesting, some simple, some tragic. But we’re all stories.
And from time immemorial, all we’ve tried to do is gather as many stories apart from our own as we can. For as long as there’s been civilisation, there’s been storytelling, a trading of lives, a recounting of tales. Because sharing comes easy to us. Sharing is natural.
Overtime, we become so ingrained in the world of stories that it becomes part of us. There are people who’ve read hundreds of books, hundreds of lives. And these stories have the power to shape us, to settle down beneath our skin and mould us.
Children hear bedtime stories before they sleep. When they’re older, they read them on their own. Some of these children grow up to be readers, forever evolving, forever changing and forever learning. Some grow up to be writers, who have some stories of their own that they want to tell and they become the agents of change in others. Some grow and are still shaped by the stories they valued as a child, though they might not know it.
One of the earliest written stories is the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem discovered in Mesopotamia which narrates the tale of friendship, of growth, of tragedy and of love. Stories like this one have had major influence on societal growth and change, even from ancient times.
Stories are what define us. Stories are also what change us, in more ways than one. They have a power over us that we sometimes don’t realise but this power is why writing can change the world.
Writers can change the world
Writing feels like a duty, a purpose, like destiny has been thrust upon you with the burden of the world handing by a thread, a pen. Writing feels like how the sky must feel to a baby bird still learning how to fly. It feels liberating in a way only few things can feel, like perhaps only creation can feel.
Because you are creating something. And what better way to change the world than to create the world you want? Writing feels pure in a way few things can, because here you are, with nothing but an idea and the determination to see it grow into something that can breathe on its own.
Writing is like immortalising yourself in the most passionate way possible. It’s like immortalising an idea, a thought, an emotion and making it reach the world. There is so much pain in this world. There is also so much love. Happiness and sorrow infiltrate every life, every being and there is so much to capture. Writing feels like there’s a magical camera in your hand, and every picture you take will be captivating, mesmerising, perfect.
But the battery is running out and you have no charger and so much to see, so much to explore, so much to write down so that you don’t have to memorise.
‘Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.’
Natalie Goldberg
And sometimes, this is just what brings about a change. Passion and a healthy dose of angry venting. Psychology says it’s cathartic, to vent out your anger and rage in other ways. And writing just might be one of the most productive, most helpful ways of letting out all the rage that builds up inside of you as you encounter the world in all its tainted glory.
The world is a cruel place, and often times we treat art as a way to escape the cold reality of this world. We turn to books and movies and songs and paintings when everything else fails, when everything else is too disappointing. We turn to creation.
What better way to escape than to create?
For centuries, writers have been the ones to change the world in simple, subtle ways. Books, articles and poems have been the perpetrators of change, slowly, gradually. Sometimes, it’s so slow that we can’t even tell something so being changed until the change and it’s result is already before us.
There have been thinkers who wrote books that revolutionised the literary world. There have been philosophers who brought about massive changes in ideologies and public opinions. Perhaps one of the first kinds of changes brought about be writers was during the period of enlightenment and the birth of printing technology. Books were suddenly available to the masses. There was suddenly a way to talk to hundreds, maybe millions of people at once and persuade them toward a cause.
There was a way to change thinking.
At first, non fiction was effective in bringing about much needed changes in the public thinking, be it through philosophical articles or through scientific papers published by those who are now remembered as geniuses.
People wrote self help books, autobiographies, inspirational books, academic books, books that revolutionised thought, books that introduced new ideas, books that appealed to the public emotion.
Recently, in the last century there’s been a massive surge in the amount of fiction books published that have changed and revolutionised society in similar but subtler ways.
Sometimes there’s been use of metaphors to show the flaws of society, sometimes authors have been glaringly obvious. Some authors have written about the everyday life and have dissected even the tiniest of mundane activity, the deepest of human emotion. Other authors have created worlds of their imagination and shown how at the base of it all, every story is about someone who is just like us, in the end. Some characters are a mirror into our own souls, reflecting every imperfection, other characters are what we strive to be, as humans.
It is because fiction is so relatable while at the same time being completely novel that we are so attracted to the ingenuity of reading about people created in someone else’s brain.
It is because of this appeal that books hold the power to shape us and to change us in the best of ways.
If you liked this post, you can also check out 11 Ways How to Make The World a Better Place
