When you talk to as many athletes as I do, you get the idea of just how important team dinners are. 

A million times I have asked an athlete about their favorite memory with the team and while the responses vary, a common answer is some form of a team dinner. I’ve heard the answer so many times that when a player said his favorite memory with a team had been at Jerry’s World, my first assumption was that it had been a team dinner at some vintage ice cream parlor or a knock-off Chuck E. Cheese (turns out it’s just another name for AT&T Stadium). The simple idea of being around people they connect with – even for a quick meal at Whataburger – is enough to stick.    

Humans are social creatures. 

One beauty of the modern world is how we are able to connect with other people. I don’t mean through social media, though that is a major factor as well, but through storytelling and the ways in which people can connect with each other without even meeting them. The news provides more than information, it brings to life stories of people who one would not have known much about were it not for articles called human interest or feature stories. 

They are my favorite kind to write. 

I’m a person who feels what other people feel, taking in emotion from my interviews and emulating it in the stories I produce. Think of the pride a parent has when talking about their child. Think of the adrenaline coursing through the veins of an athlete describing the heat of the moment. Think of the ache echoing in a distant voice of someone who experienced heart wrenching tragedy. The sparkle in people’s eyes and the change of inflection in their voices as they begin to talk about something or someone they love – that will never grow old, even as I enter my third year of interviewing. 

Though perhaps not in the same context or to the same degree, we all share the same emotions. We know what it’s like to feel delight, energy and grief. Stories simply provide the avenue to relate to others and the method in which the web of interconnectedness grows. Connections to other people are the key to happiness, not in the sense of advancing through networking, but in how being around other people produces some of the best memories people have in their lives. 

Connections to other people have changed. 

For me, both as a virtual learner and someone who doesn’t go out other than for appointments (doctor, dentist, once a haircut) and sports coverage, connections have come from living vicariously – living through the stories of other people and feeling emotions based off of their experiences. 

What will be my first homecoming football game will be spent taking photos on the sidelines rather than cheering in the stands, as I can’t be in the midst of a crowd the way I had so desperately wanted to for my senior year. Rather, the thrill of the night will be seen through a camera lens. It won’t be the same, of course, but the story captured through photos brings about the emotions I would have loved to have felt first hand. 

No story is solely a single person’s. In the way the modern world allows stories to spread, each experience touches a wide audience and builds those connections to complete strangers through emotion alone. It might not be the exact team dinner atmosphere of being around a second family, but it’s a distant sensation of existing in a place with people you connect with simply through shared feelings. 

Stories draw us closer, especially in times where we seem physically further apart than ever. 

Follow Sally (@SParampottil) and @CHSCampusNews on Twitter.