I grew up without stories.
Following science as the only God …
I grew up in an urban settlement; my mother was a biologist, and my father was an engineer. Following science as the only God, the stories around were about technology, hard data, or science.
I grew up with no stories, for everything was reduced to facts or formulas.
Tales were just fabrications of something inferior or immature.
There was one story, though. A fascinating story that nourished my inner mythology. On those bright summer nights near the ocean, my dad used to recount stories about the universe. He told me that before starlight reached Earth, the star itself might have exploded millions of years ago, so light traveled alone throughout the cosmos, in an ancient peregrination of photons illuminating our night skies. This story captivated me because it brought mystery, although it was told for its science and all factual elements.
Mystery appealed to me, as it wasn’t abundant within the narrative of my childhood’s exact science. Where everything could be measured and feelings were repressed to unavoidable invisible inexistence. If you just knew the right method or specification, you’d be “successful.” You’d get to understand life.
My parents have done their best; however, they were born in a hiatus generation. This period found a new purpose and intellectual superiority in science and technology, neglecting their ancestral stories. Abandoning the land for it was full of folklore and traditional beliefs, as this was seen as inferior knowledge— no wisdom at all, just ingenuity of poor people who should know better. People fled poverty and hunger, believing modern science would save the world from this harsh reality.
Consequently, I grew up with no stories.
No stories of the ocean or the depths. No stories of the land, forests, or mountains. Nothing spoke, not even the animals. Empty of deep relationship with the land and ancestors. Void of belonging. There were no subtleties, subjectivities, or fascination because everything could be measured and mapped.
The world was mutely objective — a dead place as scenery for human life.
A factual context that did not hear the embrace of life’s songs or patterned rhythms.
There was no possible dialogue because the expected answers were supposed to be accurate in monolithic only-human language — such an immature need to validate the abstract human-centric view of the world, oblivious to nature’s richness and abundant voices.
My family told me that a story is just imagination for little kids, simple fantasies to help little ones sleep. There was nothing there. Fables avoided reality itself, so they could never be trustworthy. You can never measure a story or a myth.
Then you go through life without stories, the ones that connect bringing meaning and that help you belong beyond facts or causations. And as a consequence, you get lost, fallen in the monolithic superficiality of factual abstractions — severed from the soul of the world, and your visceral place in it.
I grew up without stories, but that made me (re)discover them throughout life.
After my first child was born, stories were woven inside me. This time, I noticed, heard, and re-membered forgotten memories of the mystery of invisible things. I began to recognize the stories I sewed within myself when I was a child, mainly through day-dreaming — those moments I had to hide because stories were not real. Nevertheless, I nurtured them throughout my body and soul during the years, so narratives within just bloomed when I became a mother. Meaning and mystery embraced and nourished me once again.
I could never go back; I could never settle to be oblivious again. I can never mute the world or the cosmos.
