My story...my story...my story...Dammit! What should my story be doing? Trying to accomplish? Is it one thing or many?
Hmm...
Whether thy masterpiece of a novel, or thy life's story, or thy "Story" on Facebook that exhibits annoying notifications across my (not thy) feed, when we speak of our story—just what the hell are we talking about? What should we be saying? What are we trying to accomplish via telling our story?
Let's get to the bottom of this...
Insofar as we may define stories as being primarily spoken—whether at a dinner table, from a podium in a speech, or across the airwaves in a mockumentary—then it is possible to suggest that stories are told.
And if told, then they are meant to be shared, yes?
That is, to my mind, the stream flowing under our words. Subterranean. Not directly recognized while we speak to one another. Yet an essential foundation to our communication.
Another inescapable rule of communication: one person talks at a time. Ever tried listening to two people talk at once? What about three? Four? It doesn't take many more than fingers on one hand to turn talk into garble. Thus stories are told from one to another, in theater-form (from a troop of troubadours) or even in that face-to-face interview style of give and take, or even in that quicker-than-light speech that teenagers somehow manage to bounce back and forth from their lips as though bobbing hot potatoes...
Somehow or other, one story—and only one story—can be told and heard at a time. (Basic mechanical assumption I've made there; probably has some proper name in the realms of audiology or human cognitive studies, et al...)
But if a story is meant to be shared, and only one story at any given time can be heard, or paid attention to, then that sums up the answer to the title question—no?
Answer: That a story should be shared. Preferably one story at a time, much like one bite of food may be ingested at a time because we cannot ingest anymore than that at any precise moment given the fundamental functions of mouth, ear and eye—yes? Even if we are particularly gluttonous for story content!
Is this correct?
It seems too painfully simplistic and obvious to be fully, satisfactorily correct. Of course stories should be shared! What's the point of them otherwise? Duh!
But—to counter this counter—what of stories we tell ourselves? That we are only sharing with ourselves? Driving home in the car, rehashing that exchange with our boss. Maybe even retelling it to ourselves (practicing?) before we tell it to our spouse over supper. What of rationalizations and after-the-fact explanations and excuses and speech preparations and fantasies of potentially sticky exchanges—perhaps, maybe even possibly—going the way of our throbbing longings?
Even then, the stories we tell ourselves are told to a single audience of one, even if as a means to ultimately share those stories with others. This may be extrapolated to include the histories victors in a war will tell themselves (nations, I mean) versus the histories a loser in the same war might tell otherwise.
There are meanings within meanings of any story. Best place, though, to figure out what your story should do, is to find out just who your listener(s) are turning out to be.