Conflicts and Stories

Written by Navid Alam, from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Navid is currently studying in his third year of BA English at the Canadian University of Bangladesh. Please read his article and leave your thoughts and comments below.

Stories are something which gives us feelings of joy, satisfaction and fun. While a lot of people enjoy creative stories, many tend to enjoy realistic stories, to find the fun of life and to learn new morals of leading a good life. These realistic stories sometimes take a dark turn when involving disturbing subjects. One of these disturbing subjects is conflict, in my opinion, the most disturbing subject of have stories.

The world is infected by various forms of conflicts and this infection is spreading at a deadly pace. It is hard to think about the outcomes of a simple disagreement and/or agreement of policies which could change the face of a nation and its politics. Countless victims are born despite being so innocent. Families fear whether their loved ones will ever return when the conflict passes. People lose their valued assets and children lose hope of finding a good education and a good future. Despite the hardships found among these innocent beings, there are some people who find these fascinating. If your guess was political figures, then you are not mistaken. Conflicts are created by politics and despite seeing their country getting torn apart by a war amongst its inhabitants, political figures find conflicts to be a sign of their wealth and try to find a way of earning money. Along with politicians, the media has interest in such stories but also opportunities for creating awareness. Other media channels, the ones funded by corrupt politicians and rulers, use images of conflicts and create stories which mostly contain hatred and negative stereotyping of these people. They will only show the negative sides of the people living in conflict zones and will ignore the positive sides these innocent people possess. Both political and religious figures use these images and resources to create up stories which only attract people of their kind and not the big audience.

So is conflict really necessary to be the source of stories? The simple answer is… no. Our lives are gifted with various situations happening on a daily basis. We have the ability to go through ups and downs in life and these are more than enough to create a good story. Let’s take the example of a couple. There are many decisions in life which cannot be agreed by both the parties. The couple will experience different situations going through life such as arguments, punishments, love and memories, which can enable them to tell stories which are far more interesting than the conflict related ones. So do we see any sort of conflict here? Absolutely not! These real-life situations create multiple stories about lots of interesting topics that can be told and heard and can have a hearty ending.

Another way we can find stories that have the abilities of being heard and told is from our imaginations. Many people are gifted with the “visions of imaginations” and can travel through them for the creation of good stories. Using Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” as an example, we can find the imagination of a different world found, powerful enough to make us think it is for real. There are many people who use the power of imagination and merge it with reality to make a hybrid story. Even people in conflict zones, who are facing horrors, use these hybrid stories as a form of relaxing the mind and keep hope alive for finding a better future. These forms of works should be appreciated. For the fact is, the writer has kept a positive mindset and hoped to make someone hear their imaginations; not the horrors of war, but the light of peace.

So, we find out that conflict is not the source of stories, nor should it be defined as the emphasis of stories in any way. Human lives are a divine blessing and have multiple situations which have the ability of creating stories good enough to be heard and told. Conflicts are present for the fun of political, religious and national issues and figures. So if one has to come up with a good story, then it is best to look into one’s real life and find some tales to be told. Or one can go through his or her imagination and find creativity as the source. Not only will it help in writing good things but will broaden our own horizons and allow us to look further.

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