Where a story starts is almost never the beginning.

A memoir starts at the end and remembers backward.

A novel starts at the moment of change.

A nonfiction book starts with the point it wishes to prove.

We, too, are always starting in the middle. Even at the moment of our birth, we have a history that goes back hundreds of thousands of years to our first ancestor. Even at the moment of our death, we leave behind people who remember us and carry our teachings onward. We are never at the beginning, never at the end.

That’s why our civilization is built on storytelling. Telling stories helps us absorb the past, present and future so that we can hold all three within our hearts for the length of the story. For that length of time, we feel whole.

Storytelling is the closest we get to godliness.