Before We Learned to Read, We Learned to Listen

You tell a story.

You begin somewhere. You skip over things that didn't matter. You linger on the parts that did. You create tension. You introduce people. You imitate voices. You build toward a moment worth telling. Without realizing it, you've edited reality into something another human being can carry with them.

It makes me wonder if stories were ever something we invented.

Or if they were simply something we discovered—like gravity or fire—because they had been quietly shaping us all along.