“Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.” (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal, that thinks in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings.
A crucial law of storytelling is that once a story manages to extend beyond the audience’s horizon, its ultimate scope matters little. People are just not good with large numbers. In most cases, it takes surprisingly little to exhaust our imagination.
If you ask for the true meaning of life and get a story in reply, know that this is the wrong answer. The exact details don’t really matter. Any story is wrong, simply for being a story. The universe just does not work like a story.
Most stories are held together by the weight of their roof rather than by the strength of their foundations.