#5: The Classics connect us to our stories.
Each culture is
different because it has different shared stories. Different stories
define each family, each religion, each nation. And members of each
connect themselves with the stories--they make the stories part of their
personal story.
Can you imagine the Jews without the stories of Moses, the Maccabees, or
the Holocaust? Or Americans without stories of Paul Revere, George
Washington, and Abraham Lincoln? Learn the stories of a culture, and you
will come to understand that culture.
That is why I think
it is such a tragedy that the current generation of American youth are
mostly growing up without the stories of the Declaration of
Independence, Daniel in the Lion's Den, Patrick Henry, Sitting Bull or
Daniel Webster. The classics are the ark, the preserver, of stories
which unite the cultures and the generations.
In addition to
cultural, national and family stories, we each have individual stories.
We all have a personal canon, a set of stories which we hang onto and
believe in and base our lives around; and great classics are the best
canon. A canon is the set of books we consider to be the standard of
truth. Since the purpose of reading, of gaining education, is to become
good, our most important task is to choose the right books.
Our personal set of
stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the
universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us,
deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon
shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great.
