Ben Okri - The Joys of Storytelling (Episode 2)

Continuing my celebration of Ben Okri’s wonderful collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, published in 1997. Episode 2 here!

I love this book, it’s a poetic and beautiful homage to storytelling, writing, creativity and freedom, presented with a positive spirit of human flourishing and connectivity.

My focus here is a quote from the essay, The Joys of Storytelling 1. Here's the quote:

"Let us extend the heresy. Let's create a little fugue out of it. Our lives are great invisible novels. It makes no difference that they are unwritten or being written.

"It has been said that history (and even the universe) is a vast novel, a divine epic, written by God, whose script we cannot decipher. On a lower level, it has been hinted that we are writing the novels of our lives as we live, and in the living. Sometimes, by dint of foresight, or in a moment of heaven-sent clarity, we manage the great feat of rewriting the novel that our life is becoming, we manage to improve the first draft, we manage to follow an uncompromising first chapter with a brilliant second. And sometimes we manage the even greater feat of transforming the unhappy novel of our lives into a happier one - by understanding the bizarre fact that to some extent we are the novelists and composers of our lives. Like the novel, life is an art as well as a craft. While we may not be masters of all the sources of the material and the sublime waters of inspiration, at least we cannot deny the fact that we wield the pen."

From the essay, The Joys of Storytelling 1, in the collection, A Way of Being Free, page 47.

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