Orientation for The Distant Fire: The power & the point of telling your stories

And what are your stories telling you?

I tell stories about my friends and how we met, and how we’re still friends after almost half a century. I tell people about how an unexpected email started a business that has taken me all over the world and put me in the room with my heroes. I tell a story about how a line I wrote in an English essay when I was 12 gave me a flash of inspiration and happiness so profound it not only comes back vividly to me, but serves as a genuine pivot point in my life.

I tell people about the singular moment when I felt the orbit of the earth shift when I held my first born in my hands for the first time. And I tell how it felt when he woke us up three years later unable to breathe and then I tell the story of the monthly hospital visits that became the next ten years.

In every one of those stories you’ll find me as I was then and as I am now. It’s a curious mix. But each of these stories, these moments in time, made me a little more me as I am now. And your stories will do the same to you. In The Distant Fire, you and I are doing this together. I’ve got no great ambitions to write my stories down for anyone else - this is all for me. I want to know why these stories resonate. What they say about the person I was and what they say about me now.

And - being increasingly curious about them - does the fact that they are always to hand mean something special? As I retell them, does their meaning change? Are you and I telling these stories to remind ourselves, to urge caution or to act as encouragement?

The Distant Fire is about all of these questions. And we must turn to each of them unafraid. We look deeper into ourselves through our stories than ever before. Because to know yourself better is a triumph of the everyday.

Ready?

Let’s get started.