Why Are Stories Important?

Why are stories important? According to Joshua Rothman’s New Yorker article, not just to communicate who we are but because they help us come to terms with who we want to be. They help reduce the perceived riskiness of our potentially transformational decisions. Without them we (and, as we at Department of Here like to point out, places) never grow.

“To aspire, Callard writes, is to judge one’s present-day self by the standards of a future self who doesn’t yet exist. But that can leave us like a spider plant putting down roots in the air, hoping for soil that may never arrive.”