No Copyright on Life

Ostensibly, Mark Twain once said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Maybe he did.
Maybe he didn’t.
He had a good publicist.

Being friends with a writer is a dicey proposition. Sooner or later, you’re probably going to end up in a story. The good news is that I almost never remember the conversation exactly the way it happened. The bad news is that I usually remember the best parts.

You may recognize yourself in one of these stories. You may have heard one of them before.

All of them are true, as far as I know.
Not all of them happened to me.
But they happened to someone.
And, in the end, I don’t think that matters very much.

Stories have never belonged exclusively to the people who lived them.

They belong to the people who need them.

Long before books were written, stories were carried from one generation to the next around dinner tables, on front porches, in fishing boats, in church pews, and over backyard fences. Someone would begin with, “Let me tell you what happened…”

The facts belonged to one person.
The wisdom belonged to everyone.

That’s what stories do. They remind us who we are, where we belong, who we belong to, and what we owe one another. They allow us to borrow courage from people we’ve never met, hope from people who lived centuries before us, and perspective from someone who survived what we are only now beginning to face.

Perhaps that’s why we recognize ourselves in stories that couldn’t possibly be about us.

We’ve never stood on that battlefield.
We’ve never sailed on that ship.
We’ve never lived in that century.

And yet somehow we know exactly what the character is feeling.

The details are different.
The heart is the same.

I’ve spent much of my life collecting stories. Some came from my parents. Others from my brother. Some from teachers, priests, monks, friends, neighbors, and complete strangers. A surprising number came from people who had no idea they were teaching me anything at all.

I’ve simply been fortunate enough to carry them for a while.

Now I’m passing them on.

Because that’s how wisdom survives.

Not by being owned.
By being shared.