The Story of a Story...

Just occurred to me. I guess most of us end up looking, or rather intensely scouting and scanning, for lessons in stories that don't deliver them to us in the direct sense. We let out a whoop of joy when we think we have distilled the meaning out of a casual story. We believe that we have understood life and can see beyond the obvious. We are - rightly or wrongly - subjected to delusions of being intelligent and perceiving. But what do we do when the stories are otherwise? Here's what I've observed....we tend to almost dismiss stories that give us the lessons in a 'raw' form, as boring and too obvious. (I am referring to stories that make it clear to us that they are there to teach us something.) But, even amongst such 'raw' stories, I think those that successfully build a meaty and meaningful context and/or use inspiring language escape this trend. What could this possibly imply?

- People love "finding" things on their own rather than being told things directly. Hard situation to set up though. If you have the talent to make people believe they are the ones who are discovering the lessons, I bet you can "sell" anything under the sun. For that, you first need to shoot your own ego and not pine for credit.
- Those of us who do not have such niche talent need not panic. Direct play of (meaningful) context and (inspiring) communication alone can make up for the lack of fun that people get out of "discovering" things by themselves.

PS: BTW, this doesn't mean that the context and communication can be left out of the indirect stories. These stories not only have to be unique & creative but also complete in every sense. How we play around with the context and communication is what would perhaps determine how successful we are in delivering the lesson/moral in an indirect manner.