Story … is a pattern … threaded through all of us … that defines who we are by allowing us to organise and share our experience well as shape and make sense of our belief systems and reality.

Since the dawn of mankind, while children nodded off to sleep around the campfire, fathers, uncles, grandmothers and wise men told of brave warriors, immense beings, grand wars and great victories. They wove fantasy and adventure so skillfully that it only served to awaken our innate sense of curiosity and make us believe the impossible was possible.

From Jesus to Homer, Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote), Franz Kafka, Winston Churchill, President Obama, Leo Tolstoy, Ngugi wa Thiongo, CS Lewis, Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrison, Speilberg, Guillermo Del Torro, Tim Burton, Michael Jackson, and U2, the best leaders, politicians, bards, ashiks, griots and prophets have understood the power of story. They’re each skilled orators weaving together the dreams and hopes of entire populations using myths that are intriguingly similar in content and structure from culture to culture.

In ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ sociologist Joseph Campbell explored the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth. In a well-known quote, Campbell summarised his theory: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Joseph Campbell’s monomyth explains the structure of humanity’s eternal story, a tale that lies deep in our souls, placed there by the Ultimate Storyteller. This eternal story is what we respond to and recognise when we read a fascinating book, watch a poignant film or hear an amazing tale. 

The power of story to galvanise and inspire humanity rests in the dramatic tension, the unexpected yet familiar emotional reaction, the memorable story arcs and prevailing resolutions that convince us of a reality distant yet very similar to our own, that make us laugh and cry and that transport us to a place and a dreamtime far, far away, where everything is possible, where joy abounds and where there is no weeping and no pain.

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” CS Lewis. 

“The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.” Ben Okri.

“Our individual stories are an infinite, ever changing, unfettered, unmeasured, organic life force in themselves. Yes it seems that we are all telling the same story. One of birth, rebirth and despair, joy, love and pain, heartache and rejection, victory, triumph and redemption.” Neva Mwiti.