Change lives through the power of stories
578 weeks ago

Change lives through the power of stories

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Call me a Luddite (well many people actually have) but I LOVE paper, especially paper in books. As a storyteller I still do all my real thinking work with pen in hand and writing on paper. Only after I’ve synthesised my thoughts this way do I head to my Mac to write my next story.

I’ve been given cause to consider the role and importance of paper after reading a summary of Ian Sansom’s new book, Paper: An Elegy. (Fourth Estate/Haper Collins). The article is titled, Bury me in paper, The Weekend Australian Financial Review, 25-28 January 2013.

Interestingly, Ian starts off his full-page overview with, “Let me tell you a story. It's a story that has not been told enough.” As if I needed any encouragement to read on, but I was struck with how compelling that simple statement was…let me tell you a story. It was as if I was transported into another mindset…I was eager to delve into the story and to be transported. And transported I was as his next paragraph started with, “ It is a creation story. An epic story of origins. A story that starts with a eunuch in an emperor’s court in imperial China and his discovery of a strange new invention.”

Now I’m really hooked.

And his story is about paper, not some touchstone, ring, elixir, magical power or ancient mystery. He not only takes us on a journey of the history of paper but, more importantly, how paper has transformed the human experience. He calls is the ‘spiritual technology par excellence, the perfect multi-faith, multipurpose platform for almost any religious event,’… and some more basic day-to-day events as well.

He then comments that, ‘Everything that matter to us – still – happens on paper. We are born, and are issued with a birth certificate. We collect more certificates at school. And another when we marry. And yet another when we divorce, and buy a house, and die.’ While all of this is quite true, my love of paper is because of the stories that are written on it, that survive for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years. These are stories that have travelled through time, outlive the writer and thrill, scare, enlighten, challenge, engage and inform generations.

Sure, the eBook has the power to do the same, but there’s nothing quite like receiving and reading a book, or looking at a papyrus from thousands of years ago, to immerse yourself in the story.

 As Sansom comments, “There is no denying that we are entering a world beyond paper – or certain forms of paper. Wither books? Yet we need to remember that books existed before paper, and they will exist long after paper.

 “The paper book [may] be dead, but the story goes on.”

I beg to differ on his last statement. I’ve just spent 3 hours this weekend sorting through 20 boxes of books that were donated to the charity I Chair, The Footpath Library (www.footpathlibrary.org).

 The Footpath Library gifts books to homeless and disadvantaged people across three cities in Australia. These members of our community don’t have mobile phones, 4G, IPads, Kindles or any other electronic device. And the members of this community all around the world don’t have these devices either.

What they can have is books, and through books we can enrich their lives through the power of stories.