I wipe the fog off the mirror.

The bathroom fan doesn’t work. We’ve texted our landlord about it, and he keeps saying he’ll come to fix it, but he hasn’t come. So when we take showers, we have to open the crank window as wide as possible to let out the steam, so the mold on the ceiling doesn’t overtake the entire bathroom.

I miss home. I miss my working bathroom fan, the bathmat that wasn’t soggy. I miss being able to shower for more than 10 minutes before the water becoming cold.

I look over and see the crisp winter air battling the steam of the bathroom. My breath joins the battle. I have fifteen minutes to get dressed, do my makeup, grab my school stuff, and get to the bus stop. So I hustle.

On the bus, I listen to my sad playlist. I can’t stop thinking about home. I miss home.

I barely know my roommates. It’s been a month since I’ve moved here, to attend school. I like them, of course… but I miss my parents, my friends, my cats. I miss the sunny weather and the way my house smelled.

I barely make it to class. I barely listen to the lecture. I attend two more, same drill, and wait for three crowds of people to board the bus before I can get on one. I stand the whole ride home.

My roommates are laughing in the kitchen when I get home. I greet them. They ask about my day, and I give some bland response. I ask about theirs, and they explain their classes. I put a pot on the stove. The burner won’t turn on. With this house, it seems like there’s always something, I think unenthusiastically.  I try one..two…three more times before the flames finally explode up and around the pot. I’m boiling water for spaghetti, which has somehow become my broke-student-attending-university-meal. I stare at the noodles. My roommates talk about what scary movie to watch, and I pipe up with some dumb slasher film that used to scare my pants off.

To my surprise, they agree. We laugh about the over-the-top gore, the blood raining down from the skies, the shrieks that the female actresses give before anything has even happened. I feel a bit better. We say goodnight, and all I can think about is how much fun that was.

The next morning, I get up. I sigh about my inevitable cold shower, the freezing air coming in from outside, and riding the bus. By the time I get to class, I’m miserable again. I count down the hours until I can ride back. I’m tempted to take a taxi instead of riding the bus, even. I just miss home.

By the time I get to the house, I just want to sleep.

“Hey!” I hear my roommate shout from the living room. They’re playing a board game.

“Come play with us,” she grinned, “I need another person to beat!”

I thought about sleeping, but there was something drawing me to the living room.

“What game?!” I ask, setting my bag down and joining them.

The next morning, I get up. I’m a little less anxious for my cold shower, the bus ride, and my classes. I let the inevitable rush of cold water motivate me to get out faster, and I make a cup of coffee with the extra time. I pay attention to the lecture, and I find that with my attitude improved, I actually enjoy the subject. I decide to call my landlord about the shower, and he says he has the tools to fix it and is coming over later tonight.

And I realize… I’m starting to feel at home.

I wrote this story from experience, with a few of the details changed slightly, to represent that a large part of my definition of “home” lies within the people around me. I was feeling extremely depressed when I first came up to UBC, and my roommates are a very large part of why I don’t feel that way anymore. Being separated from my community back in my hometown was really jarring for me, and it took me awhile to accept that I needed to start building a new one here to start feeling at home. My house is old and rickety and has a whole slew of problems, which can sometimes be annoying, but I’ve come to like them. I’ve come to love my home.

I have a great story to tell you.

Once, a very long time ago, before there were houses and cars and maps and stories—before there was language or community or stories to even tell, there was a small, childlike creature.

The creature was lonely. It existed in a place that was neither here, or there… of course, there was no way to know this, as there were no maps, and nowhere to precisely “be”.

But there it was. It existed. It was an enigma.

It was puzzled with it’s own existence—but not as we are. It was less, “Who am I?” And more, “How am I?”. It posited this question over and over, until it created its own reality.

This reality would eventually become what we know as our world. But nothing even close to resembling our world existed yet. This world was darker. But this darkness was not bad, or evil—yet. This darkness was simply dark because there was no light. It was as if there was a lump of coal (despite coal not existing) sitting in a pile of soot.

So the creature created something. Because it was lonely. The mere existence of the creature in a place, that was here, was not enough. So the creature created water. It put the water on the lump of coal in the pile of soot, and suddenly the lump of coal almost resembled our world as we know it. There was the coal, and the water.

But it wasn’t enough. The creature was still lonely, and the slow lapping of the water reminded the creature of this. So it created flora. It covered almost any surface on our world that wasn’t already covered in water: and some that were.

But again, it wasn’t enough. The creature was craving something more. This was a beautiful creation that this creature had made, but it needed more. It couldn’t stand being so… lonely.

So it made fauna. It created life. But the life did not interact with the creature—it couldn’t.

So the creature created humans. But the humans, despite looking at the creature, did not show gratitude towards the creature. And it was still lonely.

So the creature made the life flawed. It made us flawed.

For fauna: it created the circle of life. It created the need to destroy to survive. It created evil in humans hearts, to curse the life that the creature had made.

It may be haunting to hear about why we live with evil, why the creature still watches us in envy. But, of course, it’s too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world. You now know why we are cursed with the existence of evil.

Reflection:

In creating this story and retelling it, I found that my personality came out. The repetition was something that I relished, and that I believe drew my friends and family into the story, but also the interaction with me. I relished telling this story, and the sense of community that telling the story gave me. I appreciated being able to create my own story, although admittedly it was hard to come up with something at first. I sort of decided to focus on a single and all-powerful omnipotent being, similar to, as King points out, Genesis does (King, 24). I loved reflecting on why this was–I’m not religious even in the slightest, and I usually appreciate a story that isn’t so static as the one I’ve just told. But I enjoyed telling it. Whether or not I would enjoy hearing this story, I have no idea. I’m sure my personality will get lost over the internet, but I enjoyed this assignment nonetheless.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2010.

While language contains a lot of different aspects (gestures, tone, and grammar, to name a few),  words are the most basic aspect of communication. We type, talk, and text words every day to communicate our feelings, intentions, and stories. As Chamberlain says, “Words make us feel closer to the world we live in,” (Chamberlin, 1). So why is this?

The most obvious answer to this question (the question of why we feel connected through words) seems to be that words are how we communicate. I think that an interesting aspect of communication is storytelling. Passing along information, beliefs, and values through storytelling is, what TIME argues, makes us human. We connect through stories, and expand our world views. Growing up, learning lessons, and developing a moral compass can all stem from community and family stories being passed down. The TIME article mentions a few interesting aspects of storytelling that I believe reflect the power of words. The first example of words being important to us and connecting, is that the villages with more powerful storytellers resulted in more people being generous in regards to sharing food with each other. This is a strong example of how storytelling, and words, can improve the bonds between our communities and our connection with each other as humans. Words can have a powerful impact upon not only our society, but ourselves. Humans want to be liked by our peers and be held in high regard, and our communication (and words) have a large impact on this.

Language, and more specifically, our words and stories, shapes our culture. This quite literally relates to Chamberlain’s quote above. Our culture, and the world that we live in, is shaped by the stories that we tell and the way that we communicate with each other. How else would culture be shaped? The very notion of community is built on the fact that we can talk to one another, pass on traditions, and develop a mutual understanding between one another. I believe that this is what Chamberlin is alluding to when he refers to stories, “[Bringing] us [closer] to the world we live in by taking us into the world of words,” (Chamberlin, 1).

Sources:

Carlson, Benjamin. “Yes, Language Does Shape Culture.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 26 Oct. 2013, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/07/yes-language-does-shape-culture/340451/.

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.

Kluger, Jeffrey. “How Telling Stories Makes Us Human: It’s a Key to Evolution.” Time, Time, 5 Dec. 2017, time.com/5043166/storytelling-evolution/.