The StoriedHope Series, Part Two
(Just now joining us? Check out Part One first.)
We already know we’re all looking for hope.
Sometimes we look to other people to assure us that all will be well. Sometimes we look to the news for hope (though we rarely find any there).
Sometimes we look to stories. We find our favorite theater seats for the latest Marvel installment or we get lost in a novel a friend recommended. We cheer for the underdog, cry at the sad parts, and repeat our favorite lines with friends – all the while identifying similarities between our favorite stories and our own stories we live out every day.
Stories are all around us. Books, movies, Insta-stories – they’re all significant.
How stories can give hope
We look to stories for hope because…
All good stories have happy endings. This is what we’re looking for! We want to believe that we will find our prince or unexpectedly defeat illness or rise to win a game or battle that no one thought we could win. When we don’t see a happy ending coming true for us, we turn to stories to show us that it’s still possible.
Stories show us characters or problems we can relate to. Whether fictional or real-life, all good stories resonate with something inside us. Maybe we see ourselves in the main character, or we remember when we faced a problem similar to theirs. Stories like these remind us we’re not alone, and that someone has already faced what we are facing now.
Stories remind us of truth we forget. The greatest stories carry little nuggets of truth to remind us of important lessons about family, faith, or courage. How many times have you seen that LOTR meme on Facebook about the importance of embracing the hard choices of the time we’re in? We know we should love our family, stand up to bullies, and do the right thing no matter the cost, but we get busy and life gets complicated. Stories help us remember what we too often forget.
Stories remind us we’re not the only ones with problems. While we usually personally relate to something or someone in a story, sometimes the plot is so far removed from our experience that we can’t imagine living a story like that. But even in those stories, we can understand how we might respond, and we realize that the world is bigger than our own personal problems. For example, I’ve never run for my life from Nazi troops or guards. But who hasn’t seen a WWII movie and resonated with the characters’ drive for survival in the face of unlikely odds? Once we take in a story of a war refugee or a runaway slave or someone with a terminal illness, we return to our own life-stories remembering that maybe our concerns and complaints aren’t as bad as we thought. And we hope that we can have the same courage and peace that others have had in their stories.
Is this escapism? Do we go the movies or pick up a book so we can forget reality? Maybe. But then maybe not. J.R.R. Tolkien (speaking of LOTR), once wrote:
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
Stories have the power to remind us of truth that relates to our stories right now.
How stories fall short
Unfortunately, like many of the other sources we look to for hope, stories can’t solve all our problems.
If we read or watch a story where a character we relate to faced problems similar to ours and came out victorious, we still have no guarantee our story will turn out as well.
Stories show us possibilities of resolution and hope, not assurances. They can’t promise anything in our story will get better.
So the reality is that most stories can’t give us hope. They can only point us to it.
But there is one Story that can truly give us hope. In fact, this Story houses the truth about hope and the only way to find it.
All other stories piggyback off of this one.
