P.S. Perhaps stories are like stars...

Perhaps stories are like stars, concrete clouds of gas and fire that do, indeed, exist - we see them with our own eyes and can prove their existence in scientific ways - yet exist in a time and place that we cannot access from our vantage point. We cannot touch the stars for they are both too far away and far too large and magnanimous to touch. Even less are we able to move them from where they are set in place. Yet, generations of humans have looked to the stars and attempted to use them to make sense of the word - to draw pictures in the sky that explain and recall who we are as a people. We do the same with stories: we return again and again to the fundamental themes of learning how to live, pointing to something that we know and experience every day, yet feels very far away when we try to grasp it between our fingers.