The Past
In the sterile office of my media consulting firm, I prided myself on being a narrative purist. My colleagues would joke that I was more rigid than the style guides I meticulously enforced. Stories had rules, boundaries, sacred structures that shouldn't be violated.
My critique was my armor. By dismissing genres and narrative styles that didn't conform to my intellectual standards, I created a protective shell around my own insecurities. Science fiction? Too fantastical. Fantasy? Escapist nonsense. Genre fiction? Beneath serious consideration.
I remember a heated argument with Rovan, a junior writer in our creative department. He was passionately defending a young adult novel about a protagonist transported into an alternate reality. I rolled my eyes, launching into a ten-minute lecture about narrative integrity and literary merit. Poor Rovan just stood there, his enthusiasm slowly dimming under my relentless critique.
The Turning Point
Everything changed during a client project analyzing global storytelling trends. I was assigned to research narrative structures across different cultures. What I discovered shattered my entire worldview.
Story after story, from Indigenous oral traditions to ancient mythologies, followed remarkably similar patterns. Protagonists displaced from familiar contexts, gaining unexpected abilities, navigating strange new worlds. These weren't just random tales - they were fundamental human experiences of transformation.
The revelation hit me like a thunderbolt. My dismissive attitude wasn't intellectual superiority. It was fear. Fear of complexity. Fear of stories that didn't fit neatly into my preconceived boxes.
Looking Back Now
I realized I had been committing the ultimate literary sin: limiting imagination. By creating artificial boundaries, I was strangling creativity. Stories aren't about conforming to rigid structures - they're about human experience, about connection.
That young adult novel Rovan defended? I read it. And it was brilliant. Not because it followed some perfect literary template, but because it captured something raw and genuine about human adaptation and resilience.
My cynicism had been a defense mechanism. By critiquing everything, I never had to be vulnerable. Never had to admit that stories - ALL stories - have value.
What I've Learned
Narratives are living, breathing entities. They evolve. They transform. Just like humans. The moment we try to cage them, we lose their magic.
Every story - whether it's about a retail worker suddenly in medieval times or a quantum physicist exploring parallel universes - carries universal human truths. Displacement. Adaptation. Growth. These aren't genre tropes. They're the fundamental language of human experience.
The Lesson
Dismissing stories because they don't match our narrow expectations is intellectual cowardice. True understanding comes from openness, from listening, from recognizing that every narrative - no matter how strange - contains a kernel of human truth.
We are all, in some way, strangers in a strange land. Always adapting. Always learning. Always transforming.