Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
Barry LopezRead
We keep each other alive with our stories. We need to share them, as much as we need to share food. We also require for our health the presence of good companions. One of the most extraordinary things about the land is that it knows this—and it compels language from some of us so that as a community we may converse about this or that place, and speak of the need.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our stories and connections with others are vital for our well-being.
In this quote, Barry Lopez emphasizes the importance of storytelling and companionship in sustaining our lives. Just as food is necessary for physical health, sharing our experiences and connecting with one another fulfills an essential emotional and social need, fostering a sense of community and understanding about the world around us.
Themes
StoriesHealthCommunityCompanionshipSharing
In practice
Example use cases
During a community gathering, to emphasize the importance of sharing personal experiences.
More from Barry Lopez
All quotes →Remember on this one thing, said Badger. The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memories. This is how people care for themselves.
Barry LopezRead
The land retains an identity of its own, still deeper and more subtle than we can know. Our obligation toward it then becomes simple: to approach with an uncalculating mind, with an attitude of regard...be alert for its openings, for that moment when something sacred reveals itself within the mundane, and you know the land knows you are there.
Barry LopezRead
The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.
Barry LopezRead
The cold view to take of our future is that we are therefore headed for extinction in a universe of impersonal chemical, physical, and biological laws. A more productive, certainly more engaging view, is that we have the intelligence to grasp what is happening, the composure not to be intimidated by its complexity, and the courage to take steps that may bear no fruit in our lifetimes.
Barry LopezRead
Over the years, one comes to measure a place, too, not just for the beauty it may give, the balminess of its breezes, the insouciance and relaxation it encourages, the sublime pleasures it offers, but for what it teaches. The way in which it alters our perception of the human. It is not so much that you want to return to indifferent or difficult places, but that you want to not forget.
Barry LopezRead
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