Translated…
People love stories, because we can meet our own “desires” and our own “fears” from the tales of others…
Keeping Guard for Ninety-Nine Nights
This is my most favorite love story:
The king held a birthday party for his beautiful princess, there was a soldier standing guard, as he saw the princess pass in front of him, he was, deeply attracted to how beautiful she is. But, the soldier knew, that with his standing, he couldn’t possibly be good enough for the princess, after all, she was, the daughter of the king, so he could only miss her day and night. Finally, he’d gotten up the courage, to get closer to her, told her, that he couldn’t live without her. And the princess was moved by his heart too, and so, she’d told him, “if you can wait for me under my balcony for a hundred days, then, I will be willing to marry you.”
After he’d heard, the soldier started, standing guard, one day, two days, ten days, twenty days passed, and, no matter if it was the wind, or the rain, the soldier still stood, even as the birds came to nest on his head, and when the bees stung his face, he’d remained, statuesque, waited for the princess, to tilt her head out of the window, to look at him. On the ninetieth day, the soldier fell ill, but he was able to, use his strong will, to keep his weakened body there, and, on the evening of the ninety-ninth day, the soldier stood up, took his chair with him.
—————why?
This, was the story that the elderly movie projector told the boy in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, which got etched into my mind.
Why the Stories
Since the beginning of times, humans had loved the stories, from the past when the ancient people sat around the campfires, and told of the adventures of their hunting journeys, to modern day man, sitting on the MRT, sliding the phones, watching the mini movies—but, why do we need to hear the stories? And, what do all those things that’s already happened got to do with us? What sort of instincts, drive us to examine someone else’s past behaviors?
People loved stories because we can foresee our own fears, our own desires in other people’s tales. In reality, we all longed to be loved, and so, there’s love stories, to satisfy this emptiness inside of us; because we feared death, there are those ghost stories, to tell us about the afterlife.
Stories help us balance the realities of life, when we’d found ourselves in a jam, we can make our escapes into the tales, imagine that we’d beaten the odds as they had, and turned our lives around; when our lives become too boring, we can also, get into the stories, and, followed the main characters around, on their varied adventures.
Because of stories, our lives are more enriched; because of the stories, it’d given those lost souls, something to rely on.
But, why do people love telling the stories??
I think that people don’t necessarily “like” telling stories, it’s because they have a need for it. Through storytelling, we’d left the markings of our own lives, the stories we told, serve the purpose of that longing to be accepted, to be noted, for our own existence.
So that, is why there’s this need, for an assortment of movies, romance, for those of us, longing to find that one true love (good luck!), adventures, so we can find something interesting, in the ordinariness of living, and, the purpose of stories, is merely, to fulfill a part of us that is lacking in life, it’s tragic, if you think about it, because we’d have to, live IN someone else’s tales, because we can’t afford to have our own!
Life, the Obstacle Course 