Fiction Can Be Non-Fiction

A few years ago, a life-coach friend of mine posted a question asking her followers to list the books they’ve learned from the most. Life coaching is one of those strange intersections of entrepreneurialism, self-help, and late-stage capitalism. It was no surprise, then, to see people listing the usual round-up of non-fiction titles and authors: Dispenza, Robbins, Bandler, Gladwell, Covey, Thiel, etc. One of the things that struck me was that no one posted any books by fiction authors. I’d read many of those books and, while interesting, none of them blew my mind. My description of many of these works would be: ‘derivative’. All these people trying to ‘make it’ and get rich and famous for finding the ‘next/new big thing’ were not indulging their imaginations.

There is a belief out there by everyone except book nerds that fiction is make-believe, fake, or not real life. And yet, I would argue that the most significant life lessons can be found in the pages of fiction novels.

Photo by Vedhas Pathak on Unsplash

For thousands of years, we’ve been telling stories to each other. Oral storytelling helped to create a continuity of culture from generation to generation. These stories explained how the world came to exist, the order of things, and the importance and reasoning for morals, ethics, and virtues within the social group. Once we developed writing, these stories could spread further on clay tablets, temple walls, and scrolls that could spread further afield and reach more people. And now we have books, newspapers, and the internet.

Nowadays, as a sequela of the Enlightenment Age, we turn to the practice of science to find truths, no longer dependent on social assumptions and mythologies to try and explain how the world works. With this has risen the ‘genre’ of non-fiction writing. This makes sense, as we want to pass on the truths we find through scientific endeavour in an exact manner — outlay the data and explain what it means. This is fine when we want to communicate how amlodipine lowers blood pressure and how average global temperatures rise above a certain level due to carbon-based pollution, which will lead to extreme weather events and disruptions to the planetary ecological network.

But when it comes to the personal (and how the personal interacts with the transpersonal and the ecological), we learn better through storytelling. Because human stories are relatable. They make sense. And a good writer is one who can make their ‘message’ relatable to a reader.

I’ve spent my entire adult life immersed in spiritual and developmental endeavours. From an early age, I knew I needed to learn to be the best version of myself as possible. And so, I read philosophical treatises and spiritual texts. But ever since reading C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 3rd grade, I developed a love of fantasy (and later science fiction) and so also voraciously consumed anything fictional I could get my hands on. As well as Lewis’ Narnia stories, I grew up with Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Lofting’s Dr Doolittle, Garner’s stories based on Welsh mythology and Jules Verne’s steampunk dreams. In high school, I read the fantasies of Feist, Eddings, and McAffrey, as well as discovering the brilliant sci-fi of Asimov, Wells, and Heinlein. Frank Herbert’s Dune still stands out as one of those moments that inspired me to seek out an understanding of religion, philosophy, ecology, politics, and history. My reading tastes definitely broadened as I followed the various breadcrumbs that fiction authors left for me.

Outside my formal studies at universities, the most I’ve learned about myself and the world I live in has been from fiction — even the most fantastical. Nikos Kazantzakis taught me some of the most profound gnostic teachings that have inspired me to live my life as best as possible. With Wú Chéng'ēn, I learned more about Buddhism than any comparative religion textbook: how is Monkey a metaphor for humans driven by animal desire? With Asimov’s robot stories, I learned more about what it means to be human: what if we all lived according to the three rules of robotics?

This isn’t confined to just books, either. Storytelling in the postmodern age now happens in film, TV, and graphic novels. An amateur football coach from Kansas with the trauma of discovering his father’s suicide teaches us more about enlightened, non-toxic masculinity than any self-help book (Ted Lasso). Two brothers, on a search to right the wrongs of their past mistakes driven by the inability to let go of the loss of their mother, teach us about the corruption of power (FullMetal Alchemist). A linguist holds onto the hope that all beings in the universe seek connection and does what she can to find common ground and communication (Arrival).

"Hey, look, kind of hurts my feelings y'all don't want to spend next weekend with me, if I'm being honest. But I am the strong silent type, so I ain't gonna let you know. But I'm also loud and weak, because I, like all humans, contain multitudes."

This is also why people are surprised that someone who trusts science and evidence-based knowledge also places high regard on mythology, spirituality, and practices like astrology. These things don’t have to be ‘real’ or ‘factual’ for me to find meaning in them. God doesn’t need to actually exist for me to seek solace in them. Yeshua, Arjuna, or Siddharta don’t need to be historically real people for us to accept their alleged teachings about being kind to one another. Those who seek literal truths from religion, mythology, or New Age mysticism miss the point of what is being given them: stories to engage with and take from them what you will.

Fiction has value to the human soul and inspires the imagination to explore ideas and develop them for the betterment of ourselves and others. Without stories, we cease being humans and put a stranglehold on the continuity of human culture and civilisation. Writers of stories have gifts for us all — so support them by buying their books and sharing their stories with everyone around you.