Much Love Monday

I was thinking all weekend about myths: the myths we can make of ourselves, the myths others make of us, myths of places, origin myths.
The function of the myth in the latter is to employ anecdote where reason fails. For example, Plato wanted to say that the earth and all things on it were created out of goodness, but because he couldn't prove it logically, he told the anecdote of Socrates' life, who reportedly lived a good life to the very end.
The stories I rely on personally often have to do with those impossible days of youth and beginnings: one makes it through so many situations that at the time seem insurmountable.  I use those memories to guide me in the present: when life seems difficult, I tell myself the story of how I've made it through tough times before.
I consider these 'myths' helpful. I do not embellish them as myths in epics are dressed up, with extravagant metaphors of sea creatures and fairies. I also try not to resort to such stories when I should be opening my eyes and ears.
But it seems to me that it is possible to willfully manufacture a most tragic kind of myth. One that closes people off from growth through dominance or oppression. Take for instance national stereotypes. There are some nations where the stereotypes don't seem like stereotypes because they are just so unusual and exotic. So they seem to stick. And people who visit such countries feed into those myths, never stopping to ask if they are true to reality. The myth is compelling, because myths complete us in a way reality is sometimes unable to.
Which is not to say that I will ever stop with the myths I tell myself. Rather, I prefer to focus on those myths with notes of hope, with space for love and growing understandings. Myths with movement, not cartoon myths.
That's the kind of story I'd like to tell, one that gives everyone the space to be who they are, without my passionate interruptions. I want to understand that sometimes I don't have all the information I need to form an opinion, and withhold from an opinion a while longer. My myth would not only be about me. It'd be about about just how deep love is, how much space it makes for all of us, and the space it gives us in which to learn. My myth would be about the infinite new beginnings we each get, and the promise of the attempt. It would understand that we are all in this together, and how we're trying as best we know how. That's why I love old-school myth on today's Much Love Monday, they are just vague enough to be general enough guides for how to live. What stories do you like to tell, or return to?

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