Changemaking Stories

Since human being started writing, they began sharing stories. Writing and sharing stories is a characteristic of human nature. Not only stories are beautiful, but also they are used in a variety of ways: to express feelings, to describe situations, to let readers dream, and most important, to change the world. But, how can stories change the world? They can change the world in many ways, but this time we will focus on one of them; stories have the potential to change minds.

Preconception is something globally widespread. All around the world we can hear the different preconceptions that exist between people from different countries, cultures and even it is present inside a country and a society. They are based on misconceptions, on false beliefs about another person, culture, etc. without knowing anything or with not enough knowledge about it, so a preconception is created. It is very easy to fall in the “temptation” of creating one about someone or something and it is a reality that all people have had at least one preconception.

A perfect tool to fight against preconceptions is a story. We have to fight against preconceptions because they are counterproductive; they promote rivalries between people, countries, cultures, religions, etc; they are an obstacle to reach global peace; and they don’t contribute to the promotion of cultural diversity and a culture of peace. I have always tried to avoid having preconceptions in my head; I thought I was free of them, but when I had the opportunity to travel to and international congress in Switzerland, I realized I had many of them. First, hearing stories and then reading them helped me realize that the preconceptions I had about different European and African countries and cultures were completely wrong. So, I decided to take them out of my mind and started reading stories that changed my mind and took out many preconceptions.

For those reasons, stories should be shared, should be promoted, and should be written. Through stories we can change minds, we can destroy preconceptions, we can share the different visions of cultures, we can promote cultural diversity, and we can promote a culture of peace. In short, with stories we can change our world and make it a better place to live in.