“We keep each other alive with our stories. We need to share them, as much as we need to share food. We also require for our health the presence of good companions. One of the most extraordinary things about the land is that it knows this—and it compels language from some of us so that as a community we may converse about this or that place, and speak of the need.”
Explore This Quote Further
Analysis of Barry Lopez's Quote on the Importance of Sharing Stories and Good Companions
In this quote, Barry Lopez emphasizes the vital role that storytelling plays in keeping people alive and connected. He compares sharing stories to sharing food, highlighting its essential nature for human existence. Additionally, Lopez underscores the importance of good companions for our well-being. Through language and conversation, communities can come together to talk about their experiences and the places that shape their lives. This quote speaks to the power of storytelling in fostering human connection and community.
The Power of Storytelling in Building Community
In today's fast-paced world, where technology often disconnects us from the people around us, the importance of sharing stories and building connections with others remains as crucial as ever. Barry Lopez's words remind us that our narratives not only keep us alive but also serve as a form of sustenance for our souls. By sharing our stories, we not only nourish ourselves but also create bonds with others, forming communities that offer support and companionship. In a time where isolation and loneliness are prevalent, the act of storytelling serves as a powerful tool in bringing people together and reminding us of our shared humanity.
Reflection on the importance of storytelling, community, and companionship
“We keep each other alive with our stories. We need to share them, as much as we need to share food. We also require for our health the presence of good companions. One of the most extraordinary things about the land is that it knows this—and it compels language from some of us so that as a community we may converse about this or that place, and speak of the need.” - Barry Lopez
Reflection Questions
Reflecting on the quote by Barry Lopez, consider the following questions:
- How have stories and companionship played a role in your life?
- In what ways do you personally feel compelled to share stories about certain places or experiences?
- How do you think sharing stories and connecting with others helps to keep us alive and healthy?
- Have you ever experienced the healing power of community and storytelling in your own life?
Similar quotes
“Conversations are efforts toward good relations. They are an elementary form of reciprocity. They are the exercise of our love for each other. They are the enemies of our loneliness, our doubt, our anxiety, our tendencies to abdicate. To continue to be in good conversation over our enormous and terrifying problems is to be calling out to each other in the night. If we attend with imagination and devotion to our conversations, we will find what we need; and someone among us will act—it does not matter whom—and we will survive.”
“Remember on this one thing, said Badger. The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memories. This is how people care for themselves. ”
“Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”
“I believe in all human societies there is a desire to love and be loved, to experience the full fierceness of human emotion, and to make a measure of the sacred part of one's life. Wherever I've traveled--Kenya, Chile, Australia, Japan--I've found the most dependable way to preserve these possibilities is to be reminded of them in stories. Stories do not give instruction, they do not explain how to love a companion or how to find God. They offer, instead, patterns of sound and association, of event and image. Suspended as listeners and readers in these patterns,we might reimagine our lives. It is through story that we embrace the great breadth of memory, that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us.”
“The writer's craft, explained! I have stood on the shores of imagination, gazing at a sea of dreams. It is a lonely place, for not many can stand on that shifting sand and call it home. I can see others who also weave a web of dreams and will share them. We are called storytellers and we alone have that gift that feed the needs of the many. We are a strange family, united in our separate talents and bonded by our willingness to share. The price we pay, is a dependence on others, reaching out to listen to our stories. WE must never forget our need for the herd or they will forget us! There is no savage punishment for such as we, than to be easily forgotten! This is our greatest fear and all of us share that terror. So write brothers and sisters, write and bare your souls without fear. If you are good enough, they will listen and they will remember you. Its all we can ask!”
“Eden is a conversation. It is the conversation of the human with the Divine. And it is the reverberations of that conversation that create a sense of place. It is not a thing, Eden, but a pattern of relationships, made visible in conversation. To live in Eden is to live in the midst of good relations, of just relations scrupulously attended to, imaginatively maintained through time. Altogether we call this beauty.”