Freewrite: Stories and Ricoeur

However, even when life is disconcordant, it is the concordance that we seek. But concordance is never found without disconcordance. And that makes life interesting in its own.

Life tells about the self, the subject. It is not just a flow of experiences. The flow of life has a logic, a narrative (other term for stories). Life, through and through, and intrinsically is already interpreted. Narrative is one form of interpretation.

It is through the narrative that life finds its meaning. An examined life is a recounted life. We find the value of life when we emplot and synthesize it into a narrative.

But the meaning of life is not completed just with the narrative. Ricoeur believes that the reader plays an integral role in its significance. The act of reading becomes the critical moment of the analysis. On it rests the narrative's capacity to transfigure the experience of the reader.

This is the reason why our everyday life includes narrating our lives and recounting other people's narratives. From that news you read in the morning, your complains regarding your boss, to that movie you watched in the evening. That's why blogs, medium, steemit, and other story platforms exist. The ones who lived the life narrates them, hoping to find its meaning. And as the ones who consumes, reads, and recounts this narratives, we often find and ascribe significance to it.

Yes words do matter. But narratives are even more important. Narratives connects people across societies and across generations. Although the one who lived the life might have lived through its finitude, his narratives could still transcend time.