“WHAT’S the use of stories that aren’t even true?”

This is the question posed by Salman Rushdie in his wonderful book Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The answer is revealed in the unfolding tale in the book, which follows the fantastical journey undertaken by young Haroun as he attempts to restore his father’s ability to tell stories.

The imagery and happenings, the settings and characters are so clearly impossible and made up yet, as you read, you encounter so many truths.

These truths lie in the metaphor of the story, of course, and they are discovered rather than explicitly told. That discovery is rooted in the reader’s own experiences and understanding of the world. And that’s what makes the truth contained within the story so powerful.

Of course this is not new, humans have conveyed truths in story metaphor for thousands of years.

The creatures of our folklore tradition, for example, such as kelpies, broonies, faeries and selkies, although created by human imagination, are truthful embodiments of very real dangers, desires, emotions and experiences; so much so that these mythological creatures were often regarded as real in days gone by.

Over the summer school holidays, I spent time sharing tales and storytelling traditions with teachers from different countries and cultures. We all had different historical tales to share from our countries, but we also shared a mix of legends, stories from folklore and traditional fairytales.

As we shared the stories close to our heart, threads of common truth began to weave amongst us. We felt connected by the metaphorical truths in the stories, regardless of our political, national and cultural differences.

I would never advocate that we should all blindly try to forget our differences and stop arguing our point of view. Our identity is important and, in a healthy democratic society, we will always disagree with each other on such things as politics, lifestyle and other issues.

The trouble, as I see it, is that fact, or truth, is often not seen as objective in such debates. I’d suggest this is nothing new, but the scale of it is. Often these disagreements and different perspectives are rooted in what people see as different values. Values really matter; they are the core of everything that follows.

If we can get to our shared values then perhaps that’s a way for us humans to move out of this quagmire of mistrust, hatred and violence that seems to be rising, and threatens to engulf our common future. But how do we do this?

There is an island on Loch Leven, next to Glencoe, named in Gaelic Eilean a’ Chombraidh, which people refer to as the Island of Discussion. According to the story, this island was used to settle disputes by the MacDonalds – some say with the help of whisky and cheese. Well I’m not sure about the wisdom of adding whisky to help resolve a dispute, but I like the idea of an island devoted to uninterrupted discussion.

What we need are thousands of ‘Islands of Stories’. They don’t have to be real islands, of course, but spaces that serve the same purpose: where people come together, especially people who can’t agree, to tell and listen to stories that ‘are not true’. When we are deeply divided, the shared space of story metaphor can help us connect to what we share.

It may not change what we believe, or how we interpret facts, or stop us passionately disagreeing on issues close to our heart. But the purpose would not be to win an argument or prove someone right.

The purpose would be to connect people’s hearts, rather than change their minds. That can be the beginning of understanding, which, even when it’s reluctantly taken, can be a key to unravelling hatred and intolerance.

For me, that is one answer to the question of “what’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?”. Perhaps you could call me naïve, perhaps I am. But I have seen this work – on myself as well as others.

Dictators and people with power can manipulate and distort ‘facts’ and ‘truth’, they can dictate historical narrative, but they can’t control metaphorical truth in a story.

That’s why stories which aren’t even true are so vital to us all.