The Difference Between Stories And Lies

The great storyteller Ansoluman was once asked, by one of his crowd of regular listeners, “Are your stories true?”.

To answer this question, Ansoluman told another story, about the young man who fell in love with a shapeshifter.

“I don’t know who you are”, said the young man. “Yesterday, you were a young woman; today, you are a dear running through the forest; tommorrow, you may be a fish swimming in the sea. What is your true form? I must know this if I am to truly love you”.

The shapeshifter replied, “The true me is inside. Although I change my outer form from day to day, like changing clothes, the person within is always the same. Tomorrow, I will be a sparrow waiting on a branch to sing outside of your window but the love within my heart will still be the same love that I felt when I was a woman. It is like the young couple that age and grow wrinkled outside but keep their love eternally young. Inside I am eternally and constantly your love”.

“So it is with stories”, said Ansoluman, “The details change. The names of places and people change, just as the face of nature changes throughout the seasons of the year and throughout the seasons of eternity, but the things which matter, such as love and courage, friendship and kindness, which exist within every good story, these things do not change; they are the eternal constant soul under the skin of the story; they are the eternal truths that the storyteller clothes in new variations of form and colour. Do the people within my stories exist ? Ofcourse, they are everywhere. They are you and me ”.

Ansoluman lived aeons ago, on a planet which no longer turns, in a galaxy which no longer shines and there is no trace of his existence or of the existence of all those who came to listen to and believe in his stories but God remembers him and, through God’s inspiration, he has become a character in a story of some other storyteller who is himself only a character in the eternal story.