I stepped into another world last week.
The New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth, to be precise.
Nestled incongruously among the city’s glass and concrete student towers, this venue stands as a proud relic of theatrical history. Step inside, and the outside world dissolves. The air hums with possibility, the walls warm with tales of drama, passion, and intrigue.
Before the curtain even rises, you feel it—a timeless energy, drawing you into a story yet to be told.
An escape.
Into one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest tradition in human history.
That of telling a story.
What would, hundreds of thousands of years ago, our most distant ancestors done to while away the long hours that weren’t devoted to the art of survival; what would their shared experience around a life-giving fire have been?
Stories. Some of which, even then, would have been ancient and passed down from one generation to another.
A tradition that never left us.
We do it all the time.
Think about it.
You’ll be out and about when, by chance, you bump into a friend.
Well met. Conversation ensues. And, I absolutely guarantee this, it will revolve around either you telling them about something that happened to you a few days previously else it’ll be them sharing something similar with you.
Then, what happens when you get home?
You start chatting with your partner and say to him/her, ‘…Oh, I bumped into ‘x’ today, you’ll never guess what he/she told me…’
You then go onto share their story.
Which your partner may regale to someone else the next day.
‘ ‘x’ was chatting to ‘y’ yesterday, ‘y’ was telling him/her about….’
And there it is, that same story being told again.
If it’s a particularly good one, it’ll end up doing the rounds quite a few more times until, eventually, it’s been recounted by and told to so many people, you could probably fill the auditorium at the New Theatre Royal with all the people who have heard it.
THAT’S how much we all love to tell or listen to a story.
So much so that we feel compelled, we are driven to share them. It’s part of our DNA.
Always has been and always will be the case.
When I was tottering about making my way back to a semblance of fitness after my long illness last year, I frequently came across people on my travels, new and old friends else clients or even ‘just’ business contacts who all said a variation of this one simple line.
‘Yes, I’d heard that you’d been ill’.
For some of them I really couldn’t work out how they might possibly have known. I have, for example, clients who are known only to me, none of my friends know them-and for good reason, if you are engaged as a ‘ghost’ by someone who is well known, you keep that relationship a secret.
Yet they all knew. I even got texts from some of them asking me how I was.
How did they know??
Such is the power of story-telling. That most ancient of traditions that finds a way.
The story I enjoyed on Wednesday night was Swan Lake.
Prince Siegfried falls in love with Odette, a princess cursed to live as a swan by day. Despite their love, the sorcerer Rothbart and his daughter Odile, disguised as Odette, deceive Siegfried and….
…now go and discover what happens for yourself. I won’t share the whole story.
Not this time.
Stories are essential. Life affirming, priceless, peerless. We couldn’t live without them.
We learn so much from them in the listening.
Whilst, if we tell them, we are passing on those lessons ourselves in the same humble and understated way.
One of THE major problems in today’s world is that people have stopped listening.
We can all talk.
But that’s just it. When we are all talking, so much noise is being made, no-one can hear what is being said.
One of the most powerful means of communication is silence.
It conveys emotions like respect, contemplation, or disapproval, and creates space for reflection, allowing for deeper understanding in personal and professional interactions.
Silence really can speak louder than words.
We should all, as a people, a race, species, slow down, stop…
…and find some time for silence.
With that silence eventually broken by the telling of a story.
Which we listen to and learn from.
That art of listening to a well told story must never be allowed to die.
Don’t let it.
Pause.
Reflect.
Share a story today—because in the telling, we keep our humanity alive….
