I am grateful for the books. They bring me comfort, entertainment, fulfillment and often illumination and elightenment. Each book I have read reveals one person’s story or some collective story of many persons. There are books that tell the story of nation, or a culture. There are books that tell the story of the future while others remember the story of the past. I write to tell a story, to reveal a hidden compartment within me to others, but mostly to myself. When I walk into the bookstore and see the hundreds of shelves lined with books, take the escalator to the second floor and see more shelves lined with more books each one unique in it’s own right, I might feel a sense of competition or hopelessness at the prospect of anyone finding my book amongst all these thousands but instead I feel companionship, comraderie with all those authors, all the storytellers among us. I thrill in the opportunity to see into the hidden compartments of so many of my fellow human beings. It makes me wonder then at all the stories that don’t get told. The millions of people whose stories remain within them or told only orally at the dinner table. I consider the stories told through paintings, music and sculpture and I feel better knowing that there are many ways to tell a story and even more ways in which to hear it. When I enter a beautiful building or wander through an elaborate garden I see the story of person. When I fly in an airplane or sit in front of a steering wheel and think of the inventors of the past and that their stories move, I can sit in their stories and their legacy is the sound of the motor in my ear. Teenagers wear their stories on their bodies, mothers in the worry lines of their faces, husbands and providers wear the story of their life on the faded back pockets of their pants where there is a faint impression of a wallet. Some stories are told through the eyes and others through the hands. Some stories are told through food, a well cooked meal yet others through a distinctive hairdo. Everyone has a story, what is yours?

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