Narrative

As this tree stretches outward in an effort to fill the gaps in the starry sky behind it, so do we attempt to fill in the gaps in our view. We create stories to make sense of the world, to explain what is not understood. Stories are used to pass on generational knowledge, across time and space, via oral tradition, writing, and other more modern mediums.

Many of the constellations exist today as they have been recognized for several thousand years. They are infused with meaning, given a story…individual, unrelated stars many light years apart from one another are connected in the shared symbols of human stories, to be a bear, a dragon, a hunter. Because of our propensity to tell stories, it is easy to assume the three equally-spaced stars in Orion’s Belt are in alignment, although the middle one is almost twice the distance as the other two. We are limited in our perspective, from which the three stars look the same.

Our beliefs are shaped by the stories we are told, and by the stories we make of our own experiences. From where we sit, there may be an unobserved dimension or unknown factors, and we more often than not draw conclusions from what we know, such as with those three stars, without recognizing what assumptions are made along the way. Perspective saturates everything we see and hear, and that perspective exerts influence on our perception, both when we are aware of it and when we are not.