To be human is to ____________________.

What does it mean to be human?

To be human is to fill in the blank.

NPR argues that to be human is to tell stories. I agree. To be human is to write.

But it's a terrifying struggle. Writing is like a giant three-headed monster, always terrorizing, always pulling me under and pushing me back up again. It's a struggle, a fight. I feel the call but I resist - why? Because I'm scared. It means opening myself up to criticism, opening up my deepest thoughts and desires to an audience. As the 90's song famously said, it leaves me "cold and shamed, lying naked on the floor."

Cliche, maybe, but I think cliche's have truth to them - how else would they be cliche?

In any case, I thought graduating college would leave me certain that this idea of being a "writer" would probably vanish. But still it plucks away at my brain. Maybe dealing with insecurity is a part of being human. In any case...

The whole reason I wanted to start this post was to talk about storytelling. I'm reading the book Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer and it's really got me thinking about the meaning of storytelling.

This story, especially, seems all about history - how does history influence us, how does it change us, how does it change our future and our family? There's moments where the story is very nitty-gritty and, frankly, disturbing. But then I think, isn't that sort of what life is like? Nitty-gritty and disturbing?

It also made me start thinking about who storytellers are and who they can be. Sure, not everyone is a great writer. But everyone has a story to tell. Alex, for example, is terrible at English and incredibly unreliable; he's also compassionate and endearing. He says he's born to be a writer - and maybe we're all born to be writers. Writers of our own history and our own future.