Mythology 101

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we humans have our own personal mythologies which shape how we think we are living our lives. In addition to our personal myths, there are our family mythologies, our town mythologies, state mythologies, and finally the biggest flight from reality, our national mythologies.

I used the word humans because I am reasonably certain that other animals do not have mythologies to distort their ideas of themselves. Take dogs, for instance. Just about my favorite animal, dogs just are.  They don’t second-guess themselves, they do not question their own motives, they don’t blame, over-analyze or assume; they just get an idea in their heads and act. Pure, and simple. I do see evidence of planning, and remembering, but basically dogs just are who they are; they don’t need to construct elaborate “histories” of how they got to be who they are. They do not suffer from identity crises.

People, on the other hand, can’t seem to get enough of creating back-stories. Somewhere in childhood, we begin rolling up this ball of string – this concept of who we are, and we keep adding to it throughout our lives until eventually it is a mighty heavy burden to carry around.

But we don’t stop there. We have family mythologies. In the pre-Oprah era of my childhood, every family, no matter how obviously dysfunctional, operated on the belief that one presented a happy face to the world; we showed we felt secure, capable, responsible, and at ease in our lives. No worries, no concerns. These days, however, we can’t shut up about how scarring our childhoods were, and how no one ever understood us. Both mythologies are crippling.

Each state in our country has an image of itself. Perhaps it’s because I have just watched a lot of college bowl games on TV, and have seen so many of those one minute snapshots of colleges where they quickly tell you what makes them special. States do this, too, through their tourist and visitor’s bureaus. We are hard working, independent, beautiful and intelligent. We are blessed with riches – farmlands, mountains, rivers and lakes, friendly residents, successful businesses.

What state would ever publically admit its shortcomings: too much heat and humidity, too much cold, too many rocks and mosquitoes, too flat, too hilly, nothing interesting or spectacular to look at, not enough water, too many floods, too many angry and depressed people. It’s so much better to ignore what’s really there and make up a more acceptable story of specialness. We are unique we tell ourselves. This is who we are. Eventually, we get to believe the myth, and surround ourselves with expectations based on illusions.

But here’s the problem I see with mythology. It is a fabricated explanation of how we got to where we are – what travails have made us great, chosen, special, unique, entitled to continued specialness. It focuses on the past – an embroidered past. And while there may be a kernel of truth buried in the glory of the mythology, that truth has been whittled away to support the intricacies of the continuously fabricated and growing myth.

I think we would all be better off if every day, through our actions, we lived out our unique inner dog: less attention to our assumed mantel of glory, and more attention to our better qualities: trust, love, protection, the ability to have fun, play and enjoy our friends and neighbors. We will not be mean or tell lies. We will work hard because that’s what we need to do. We will rest when we want to and not feel guilty about doing so. We will be loyal and non-judgmental. We will eat with gusto.