In the hushed and tender years of our childhood, long before the world asked us to define ourselves by our labors and our ledgers, there existed a realm of boundless imagination, where stories were the sacred text. These were the days when dusk came slow and the night was a soft blanket, woven with the yarns of the day’s adventures and the tales told by those who walked before us. In my youth, the voice that spun these tales was that of my father, a humble weaver of words who conjured up a world where the extraordinary danced with the ordinary.

Under the spell of his voice, I traveled through his creations and alongside John McClocklin, an adventurer of such daring that even the undead shook with fear at his name. Twice he battled the nocturnal bloodsuckers, once on a haunted isle where the mist clung to your skin like a cold sweat, and once amidst the steel and stone canyons of New York. It was there he found Levi, a loyal hound whose bark was as fierce as his bite. Together, they cut through the darkness with the light of their courage.

And who could forget the time they rescued Michael Jordan, the basketball legend himself, from the clutches of Saddam Hussein, right on the eve of the seventh game of the NBA Finals? These stories, outlandish as they might seem, were the seeds of dreams sown into the synapses of my young mind. My father had an imagination that rivaled any child. Some of it was a natural gift, but the rest came from his love of reading and stories. Of fiction. Of worlds better than our own. Worlds and tales which can inspire us to reach above our place and strive to make this world just a little bit better as we journey through our own stories.

It was in the sixth grade when my own imagination began to flourish. I became the storyteller, sharing the torch with my friend Curtis. Stories ebbed and flowed as I spun my own yarns. It was an exchange of wonder, grand tales told against the backrop of hot days on the playgrounds of Haynesville Junior High. Like many childhood companions, Curtis and I lost touch. He moved away, but the memories remained.

Why, then, must we tell stories? Why is it so important for our young people? Because within their telling lies the power to shape hearts and minds, to build bridges between the real and the imagined, to find common ground in our shared humanity. They encourage creativity, a sacred flame that must be tended and passed on lest it sputters out. Fiction, poetry, and the arts are not mere diversions; they are the very essence of our culture and our history.

We’ve always told stories. They are essential to society. Those who came before, those silent watchers who knew the power of the spoken word and the story’s spell, would attest, to forsake our stories is to forsake a part of our souls. For stories are more than mere entertainment; they are the connective tissue of our collective consciousness, a guiding star in the murky skies of human existence.

Let us not forget that before there were job descriptions, before there were resumes and ROI, there were stories. They were the first to teach us about ourselves and the world, to explore the boundaries of the possible and to inspire us to leap beyond them. Let us hold fast to our tales of adventurers like John McClocklin and remember that in every story lies the heartbeat of the eternal, the rhythm of a world that refuses to be constrained by the narrow expectations of utility alone.

So let us tell our stories, encourage our children to read fiction, to create, and weave tales that will carry us through the darkness and into the light. For in the end, it is not just about preparing for a job; it is about preparing for life, in all its messy, beautiful, and transcendent glory.

(Josh Beavers is a teacher and a writer. He was named as a semi-finalist for Louisiana Teacher of the Year in 2020. He has been recognized five times for excellence in opinion writing by the Louisiana Press Association.)