“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”. The world’s shortest written story.
I’m sure the last question on your mind right now would be “what is a story?”, but humor me and let me tell you what story is not.
It’s not just a sentence, it’s not just an essay, it’s not just an article, and it is by no means just some book.
You see, with the existence of a single story comes the existence of an entire world behind it. In just six words, the world’s shortest story tells a tragic tale of loss.
It’s a window to a world where a life is lost much too early, and yet at the same time, a mirror that reflects our own reality, one in which that very same tragedy is more than possible.
Any story, no matter how seemingly disconnected from our reality, has elements that can resonate with us, and there are few greater mediums of storytelling than the book. A picture’s worth a thousand words, a video’s worth a million, but a single book can be worth a lifetime.
Over the course of history, daily entertainment has undergone innumerable changes, for better or for worse. In this new world of entertainment we have been born into, reading has gone from a commonplace normality to an overlooked luxury.
According to the website Teenlife.com, less than 20% of US teens report reading a book, magazine, or newspaper daily for pleasure in recent years.
Its place in our lives has been taken by newer and shinier things like computers and cellphones that offer us the double edged sword of instant gratification. This technology isn’t inherently bad per se, but we risk so much when we opt for a screen instead of a page.
Need clarification?
Take, for example, the correlation between reading and cognitive decline in the elderly. Per the site Nlm.nih.gov, studies conducted by Taiwan’s Health Promotion Administration (HPA) have shown that reading prevents long-term cognitive decline.
Think even beyond that. There isn’t a single facet of life that isn’t greatly helped by the ability to focus, comprehend, and react. Why forfeit the opportunity to build on those skills?
Reading shouldn’t stay in the classroom. This isn’t to say one should force themself to read when it’s something they wholeheartedly despise, but as students and as people, we have an obligation to nurture ourselves and our minds, and truth be told, books offer a cohesive learning experience that we can’t get from Tiktok.
Just because it’s not everybody’s thing doesn’t mean it should be kept at the bare minimum.
“If you don’t have the chance to travel, you [can still] read about what’s going on in a different area of the world…[and] somebody’s life. It gives you a sense of what they’re going through and the struggle they face,” said Prospect librarian, Mrs. Sylvester. “It can be very eye-opening.”
When words become a vehicle for meaning instead of an obstacle, you can not only better grasp information being provided, but also derive emotional impact from what it is you’re reading.
Stories have the capacity to teach us important lessons about relationships and interaction with those around us. By not taking what books have to offer, you could be jeopardizing your connections with the people closest to you.
When I was in 5th grade, we were required to read books on our own time, and meeting the quota provided was encouraged by a list of different books that were considered appropriate and engaging for our age group in the form of a bingo board.
I approached it with typical, blameless childish dread, but one title in particular set me on course to sail through over 30 other books in just a couple months.
“One for the Murphys”, by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, chronicles the life of 12 year-old Carley Connors, who is placed in foster care after a traumatic experience. It explores the tragedy it is that any child’s life should have to change so drastically in such a short amount of time without any chance to prepare or adjust, while offering heartwarming and powerful moments of closeness and love.
In her new home, things typical to the average household are foreign to her. At first, her inability to understand what this other life had to offer was frustrating, prompting her to push everyone away.
In time, they grow on her, and she accepts the life her formerly abusive biological mother couldn’t provide.
When her biological mother comes back for her, however, she’s forced to pick between this new life and her old one. In the end, she chooses to return to that old life, but not without a renewed sense of fulfillment, self esteem and a determination to right what wrongs lie in wait.
It’s still a wonder to me how this story reduced me to a sniffling mess using only words on pages.
It was not something I could completely relate to. It did not speak on my personal experiences, but that did not stop it from speaking to my soul.
Everybody knows to be grateful for what they have, everybody knows to appreciate the people in their life, but until I could visualize what that really meant through this book, I struggled to feel grateful; to really appreciate my parents.
Life then is a blur now, but after all these years, I still feel how differently I looked at my mom after reading this book. It made me see what she carries everyday. I remember funny bits and pieces of characterization like Carley’s stepfather asking her to pull his finger. That was how I first discovered the prank, actually. Why do I remember any of this? Because I sat down and I gave the story a chance.
I lived in it, and now what I learned from that lives in me now, and I can confidently say that moms are the best people on the planet.
My personal experience with reading as a whole is one shaped by curiosity and heavy emotion. Reading “1984” by George Orwell in my Honors World Literature class certainly offered crucial lessons regarding society and the need to protect the individual, but it could only do that to the fullest by evoking strong feelings. I felt hope when the protagonist, Winston, made discoveries, and despair whenever he fell short.
When we reached the torture scene, it unlocked something within me. It summoned this inherent primal urge to scream in the face of the tormentor and beat back against the temptation to give in to the system.
Coming out of that book and walking back into my life, I felt so incredibly motivated to hold fast to my resolve as well as my individuality.
This moment of reinvention was by no means specific to 1984. In fact, whenever I’m reading a book of any kind, each story reinvents something I had begun to enjoy in the best way possible. Each story is complete with its own characters, atmosphere, writer, style, you name it. With the extensive variety of literature, redundancy is a thing of the past.
When I look into a book, I see heroes I can root for, friends I can laugh and cry with; I see people I love. Call me parasocial, but really connecting with a story does wonders for me when I feel lonely. It’s an escape from a desolate reality where I can always have company even when I’m alone in my room.
Don’t let the fantastical, dragon-filled setting of “Wings of Fire”, by Tui T. Sutherland, fool you. Cruising through every book in the series gave me this new, riveting world to check in on. I loved reading about these dragons with very human traits and conflicts, and the way they would interact with one another, it was a nice diversion from an otherwise dreary day whenever things got rough.
Coping with loneliness using stories doesn’t just mean reading books with humans your age in places you see in your daily life. To me, it meant coming home after school and escaping into a universe where dragons exist, and they can read minds and cast spells. That’s sick!
Forget about boring, desolate reality where I can’t stop thinking about how I announced the wrong answer to the entire class after being the first to raise my hand; Instead, check out this cool ancient legend and its implications regarding the morality of chronic magic use!
It made me feel like I could fly in a world where I was grounded.
From combatting the horrors of solitude to studying the nature of the very universe, everything circles back to reading. Ever wasted time on a math problem just trying to understand what it’s asking you? It wouldn’t be a problem if you familiarized yourself with the unit’s vocabulary beforehand, which gets easier the more comfortable you are with reading, as you readily take in more information.
As concluded by the National Library of Medicine on, you guessed it, nlm.nih.org, students who tend to read more often have stronger reading skills. It sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s astounding how many people forget to take advantage of that positive correlation.
However, getting back into reading isn’t always just a quick and easy stroll from the locker room to the fieldhouse. Maybe you don’t want to have to worry about keeping track of books or you just don’t have enough space in your bag. I’ve got a solution for you, and it starts with the letter “e” and ends in “reader”.
It’s the pinnacle of convenience. You can borrow books from a digital library via apps like Libby at any time, anywhere and take them along anywhere you go on something as small and convenient as a Kindle e-reader.
Typically, this is the part where I hit you over the head with book recommendations you’ll ignore, but let’s be real. It’s best to read what you find attractive! You have so much freedom when it comes to reading. Just scroll through a catalogue and pick up the first thing that catches your eye.
If you don’t like your initial pick, nobody’s forcing you to keep going. Just give it back and start anew. You won’t derive meaning from a story if you don’t enjoy it.
When you can’t for the life of you see things the way you need to, a story can put it into perspective. When it feels like you just can’t hold it together anymore, a story can be a reminder that nobody can; that you’re doing everything in your power and that’s enough. When you’re losing yourself, a story can help you find what’s missing.
But how can a story do that when it itself is missing from your life? I invite you to take that step, to bridge the gap between who you are now and who you could be, because the day we as a people stop settling for slop and divert our time and attention to real stories is the day we can truly begin to write our own.
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