I grew up in Appalachia, deep in a valley where you could find our house by watching for where the power lines shot up the mountain. We were the next house. We did have power; it just came down another adjoining valley and we were the last house on the line. I spent my childhood running all over a mountainside and getting carsick on rides into town. When I was a teenager, my aunt-at-the-time was British. When her family visited us, they were horrified by how isolated we were and asked, “how do you get supplies?” as if they might be dropped in by helicopter. Now that I’m in my mid-thirties, I do live outside Appalachia, but barely. We’re only a couple of hours away. I am Appalachia-formed.
Last week, my writing mastermind had a conversation about story and how stories shape our understanding of ourselves and the world. We develop ideas about the world from our own interactions with people and systems and institutions, but we also can learn to observe the interactions of others. Even that extra step gives us only a tiny glimpse into what it means to be a person because we are still paying attention to the people closest to us.
Stories are the easiest way to understand that people experience the world differently. Stories don’t require the time and expense that come with travel, though travel would be beautiful. Stories don’t require us to take time off work or school or from our families. Stories show us what life might be like if we were different, what life is like for other people.
This is one reason that I’ve advocated for reading widely. Read a diversity of genres. For the love of all that’s good, read good fiction. Seek for diversity in authors. If everything you read is from the same type of author (same gender, ethnicity, social status, geographic location, job type), your understanding of the world will be stunted. It might not be wrong, but it will be incomplete. Your view of the world won’t be invalid; it also won’t be universal. But it’s hard to know that if you aren’t experiencing other views. Reading can expand your horizons. It opens doors to the world.
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