It started with love.

It always does, of course. I’ve wondered about that, and I think it has something to do with love being the only truly spontaneous emotion. Love, the kind of love that starts things, doesn’t need any ‘because’. You like things ‘because’. You hate things ‘because’. When you love something, even though you may say ‘because’, it exists even when you take away the because. Love is the because of other things. The turtle. All the way down.

I’m not here to write about love in any explicit way, though. (Insert standard “If this be false, and upon me proved…” caveat here.) I’m here to write about stories.

I can only assume everyone starts out life believing all stories are true. I’m no chemist, so I’m not going to call so few data points a trend, but it just seems natural to me that people come into the world that way. Maybe that’s some kind of species memory, maybe it’s simple naïveté. I tend to think that it bleeds in from somewhere else entirely.

The next step is the whole ‘harsh reality’ kick. Toughen the kids up so they can be ‘functioning’ adults. Tell them that stories aren’t true. That stories aren’t real. We lose most of them here, of course. It’s to be expected. And when it comes to it you can’t really blame the ‘functioning’ adults. It’s very hard to imagine things from a different perspective than your own, so if that’s how you function that’s how you think it’s done and that’s what you teach the children in your care so that they can function too.

Steps three and four are part observation and part speculation for me — I left the path at step two. Still, even if I’m wrong and even though they’re optional I still think they are instructional so I’m going to include them anyway. Step three is when you realise that some stories are inarguably true. Maybe that happens when you start coming across books and movies of true events, more likely it’s when you figure out that people think and communicate in stories. When you figure out that news is stories, that decent conversations are stories, that lives are stories. That puts a crack in the “stories aren’t real” theory, and it’s enough that we get some of them back at that point.

Step four seems to usually happen around university age, though that is not a hard and fast rule. It’s part arts-kick, part philosophy-kick, and it boils down to the thought: “All stories are true, for a given value of true.” Many people who reach that point just feel smug and leave off there. Some go on to the much better: “All stories are true, here and now, for a given value of here and now.”

It was love for a character, you see. I don’t even remember which one. Maybe even love for a place. Love, the kind of love that starts things, for something that most people wouldn’t even consider real. And look, I understand that. I do. If you’re reading this and starting to form the opinion that I’m crazy, let’s agree to disagree. Because I understand your position. I respect your position, even. These things aren’t real in any useful way to most people, and to most people that amounts to the same thing. It’s like Pluto. People got all up in arms about it because people like to get up in arms about things, but when it comes down to it most people don’t care whether Pluto is a planet or not because to them Pluto might as well not be real. And keep in mind that there’s physical evidence for Pluto. Faith without evidence is just plain faith. Faith without impetus is scarily close to madness. So, yes, I understand people that don’t consider these things real. I’ve even been known to get along with people who don’t consider them at all. But they are real to me.

I have love for places. The sprawling castle of Gormenghast. Hogwarts. I have love for characters. Alice. Peter. Dozens more, besides.

That’s what started it. It was love.