How Stories—and the Stories of Others—Shape Our Lives

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How Stories—and the Stories of Others—Shape Our Lives

Our life story shapes our identity. But that story is never ours alone. It includes the many lives we’ve absorbed—real and imagined—that inform how we see the world and ourselves.

George R.R. Martin captured this beautifully:

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one.”
— A Dance with Dragons

Reading expands our reality. It deepens our understanding of the human experience by introducing us to the defining moments of other lives—their struggles, aspirations, emotional truths, and sometimes, their endings. To know ourselves fully, we must also learn from others.

Tony Hillerman, writing about Navajo culture, echoed this interconnection:

“Everything is connected. The corn beetle's wing affects the wind's direction, the way the sand drifts, and the way the light reflects into the eye of a man beholding his reality. All are part of totality... In this totality, man finds his hero, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.”

Writers are the gatekeepers to these lives. Through their words, they offer us not just stories—but access to understanding, to reflection, and to transformation.

Harold Bloom, the famed Yale professor, believed no writer offered this more fully than Shakespeare. In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Bloom argued that the playwright’s expansive vocabulary and unmatched psychological insight redefined what it means to be human. Shakespeare didn’t just write characters—he revealed humanness itself.

In a 1995 interview, Bloom spoke about reading the great authors of the Western canon—Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes—not for religious answers but for intellectual and spiritual depth.

“They tell us things we couldn’t possibly know without them,” he said. “They reform our minds. They make us more vital.”

For Bloom, these authors were not just subjects of study—they became part of him.

Shakespeare’s insights continue to resonate centuries later. A few of my favorites remind us just how deeply he understood human nature:

• There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. — Hamlet

• Hell is empty, and all the devils are here. — The Tempest

• Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t. — Hamlet

• All that glitters is not gold. — The Merchant of Venice

• To thine own self be true… — Hamlet

Life’s meaning isn’t confined to our own experiences. It expands through the perspectives we gather from others.

When I read Hyeonseo Lee’s The Girl with Seven Names, I realized how grateful I am to be aware of global struggles without having lived them firsthand. Her escape from North Korea gave me a window into a world I could never otherwise understand. Nonfiction lets us witness suffering—and resilience—without requiring personal tragedy.

Fiction, too, offers insight. The fast-paced tension of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels drops us into lives unlike our own. We experience empathy, curiosity, and adrenaline—emotions that remind us of what it means to feel alive. Literary fiction, in particular, is often defined by its ability to explore the human condition.

Poetry takes this one step further. It challenges, elevates, and awakens. Maya Angelou’s verse, for instance, gave voice to the marginalized and made space for justice and healing. Her words were a call to humanity.

In the end, what we learn from others becomes part of us. The stories we read and absorb—through books, poems, essays, or reflections—quietly transform the meaning of our own lives.