[From The Connection Cure archive — originally published in 2022]

Once upon a 1999, under a big alphabet banner and boxy fluorescent lights, I stood before my first-grade classroom and did something adult-me would forever appreciate: I told a story.

As far as stories go, mine—about the day I got my dog, Brownie—was pretty standard for a six year-old, which is to say that it was almost comically unremarkable. But as teachers and parents and anyone who’s ever asked a six year-old about their day knows, that’s the whole point: the very essence of being a kid is being able to see the world for all its unremarkable-ness and find a story in it, still.

Science suggests that the kid in us —the one that seeks and tells stories—speaks to our truest human instincts. Yuval Noah Harari writes that the ability to “transmit information about things that do not exist” makes Homo sapiens unique. He explains how we evolved to tell stories, not only to entertain,  but also to deal with its uncertainty. Look to the earliest civilizations, and where there are Big Questions—like what happens when we die? Or when we’re born? Or when we mate?— there are stories, forever codified in religions and customs and history books.

Earlier this month, while  reporting for TIME, I learned that people are reviving their storytelling skills to cope with the uncertainty that COVID has made into a fixture of daily life. Daniel Weinshenker, licensed social worker and facilitator with nonprofit StoryCenter,  explains how most of us are experiencing “the loss of the assumptive world”—grief over the big and small deaths of life-as-we-knew-it. And so, he says, to cope with our loss of lives and time and traditions, people tell stories to escape from it, to make sense of it, to get closure from it,  and to find solace among others grieving from it, too. 

Studies show that doing this helps our health, especially among those already sick;  when compared with control groups, patients participating in group storytelling sessions saw lower cortisol and higher oxytocin; reduced social isolation, and less depression and anxiety. 

But what studies can’t tell you, and something I’ve only recently realized myself, is the deeper way storytelling helps us: by inviting us to better remember our lives, and to live in a way that’s worth remembering. The late, great Joan Didion said it best: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And I’d say the opposite is true, too: we live —or, at least, we should— to tell ourselves stories. 

It occurred to me recently that I don’t remember much from 1999 except for the day I got Brownie, and the day I told a story about it. And I realized that if I want to start remembering more of my days, then I’d better start actively looking for the stories within them. To help, a friend taught me a trick: write down one, brief ‘story-worthy’ moment, every day. Coined by MOTH StorySLAM champion Matthew Dicks, this trick—dubbed ‘homework for life’— gives people not only a lifetime supply of stories, but also a lifetime demand for them. 

These ‘story-worthy’ moments will probably be unremarkable, and that’s the whole point, for it’s a way to remember what your six year-old self never forgot: how one of the best ways to cope with the fear and grief and boredom and nonsense of life is to look for small stories within it. And how, maybe, if we spend our days looking for those stories, we’ll start living to find them.