myths and truth
what I've learned from my favorite stories
I’ve always been drawn to myths and short stories.
When I was young, I think it’s because I loved the cleverness and wit that was always present in these stories; I just loved getting pulled away to different worlds, lost in the imagination of endless writers.
Now, it’s a little different. Don’t get me wrong, I still love reading these kinds of stories. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve started to relate to a lot of the situations faced by the characters I read about in some way or another. This makes a lot of sense; as my overall set of experiences has grown larger, there are more and more experiences that I can pull from my past to empathize with and relate to the characters I read about in interesting ways.
This has been beautiful shift. As I’m learning how to grapple with all the uncertainty present in my life (as well as all the things from my past that I still lack mental clarity about), every story I read provides a lens, or a way of interpreting, all the situations I encounter. They give me examples to help me see how things can play out, patterns to help me interpret complex situations, and narratives to help me understand emotions that I may not have understood before.
And I think this is what forms the essence wisdom, of growing out of a state of naïve and blissful ignorance; being able to see things from a multiplicity of different perspectives with the understanding that all of them contain a shred of truth. This isn’t to say that I’m wise, far from it. It feels like every day is a reminder of just how much I don’t know and how limited my experience and perspective is. I’d still like to think I’m taking steps towards developing some form of wisdom.
Regardless, I wanted to share some of the myths and stories that have been on my mind lately, some of my takeaways from them, and some of the questions they’re making me ponder.
balder and achilles
I lumped these two tragic mythical characters together because they share pretty similar stories.
I’ll start with Balder, a character from Norse mythology. He was a beloved figure amongst the Norse gods; he was fair, friendly, kind, and wise. He literally radiated light.
One day, he had an awful dream that his life was in danger. To alleviate his fear, is mother Frigga, the Queen of Asgard and wife of Odin, made every single creature and object in existence swear to never harm Balder. However, she made one fatal oversight; she forgot mistletoe, a plant so insignificant and harmless that it never crossed her mind to be a threat. Loki, the Norse trickster god (well, he’s a lot more nuanced than that, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll stick with the trickster god), noticed this oversight, and devised a plan in which he tricked Balder’s brother into hurling a thorn made of mistletoe at Balder himself, saying that this would only reinforce Balder’s greatness and sense of invincibility. Obviously it didn’t; the thorn killed him. Balder’s death was said to be the saddest tragedy to ever befall the gods and people alike, and some interpretations of Norse mythology credit this incident to be the start of Ragnarok (an event signaling the end of gods and men, essentially apocalypse).
Achilles is a somewhat similar character from Greek mythology. He was destined to be one of the legendary Greek warriors, the handsomest, bravest, and greatest of King Agamemnon’s army. But after his father received a prophecy that the beloved Achilles was to die fighting at Troy in the Trojan War, his mother took Achilles to get dipped in the River Styx (to make his body invincible, but as we all know, the area his mother held him while dipping him in, his heel, remained vulnerable), and his father devised a scheme to prevent the Greek generals from finding him. He was eventually found and recruited to the army, and a long siege ensued at Troy. 10 years pass, and after an incident where Achilles refuses to fight anymore (because his honor has been wounded by Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army), Achilles’ lover Patroclus decided to dress up in Achilles’ armor and fight as Achilles in order to revive morale in the Greek army camp and defend Achilles’ honor. This doesn’t go well; Patroclus gets slain by the greatest Trojan warrior Hector. In his grief-stricken rage, Achilles kills Hector, but soon after and as foretold by prophecy, Achilles is tragically killed by the Trojan warrior Paris by an arrow that is said to have been divinely guided by the god Apollo right towards Achilles’ heel, his only vulnerability.
There’s so many interesting things to unpack from these stories.
One is that greatness and status always seems to invite challenge. Balder’s radiance may have been the cause of Loki’s jealousy and subsequent scheming, and Achilles’ military greatness may have been the cause of the Trojan efforts to incite the war and the Greek hubris to elongate it.
Another is the classic reminder that perfection does not exist on this earth; a ‘fatal flaw’ exists within every single being. Perhaps that’s a hallmark of our humanity; the fact that we’re always incomplete and vulnerable no matter how much we grow.
But I’m most fascinated by what these stories seem to say about love. All the love present in these stories was paired with a sense of attachment, or a devastating fear of loss. Both the mothers of Balder and Achilles acted out of love in an effort to protect their beloved children, but in some ways, their fear of losing their children is what incited the tragedies in the first place; it gave both Balder and Achilles a misguided sense of hubris and invincibility that left them blind and vulnerable to the danger that was always present. It was Achilles’ fear of losing Patroclus that led him to keep Patroclus by his side at all times, and it was Achilles’ corresponding grief from Patroclus’ death that led him to put himself in danger.
Here’s what I’ve been pondering though: is it possible to love without attachment or fear of loss, or is that part of the package? Is it possible to experience love that doesn’t leave you feeling crippled and powerless, but instead empowered and inspired? Is doing crazy things in the name of love a sign of fear and attachment instead of true love? Why is it that the world seems to encourage displays of weakness and insecurity as hallmarks of deeper depths of love?
the dog and the dragon
This is a short story that was created as a story within a story; it was told by one character in the book to another. I know, absolutely genius. If you have 10 minutes to spare, you should read the story here (it’ll be the highlight of your day), but I’ll share a brief summary anyways.
Essentially, a very common dog sees a dragon for the very first time and is completely enamored; the dog makes it his life mission to learn to become a dragon. The dog is a very systematic thinker; he breaks down his transformation into a dragon into three steps. He would 1) learn to look like a dragon, 2) learn to talk like a dragon (the dragon in this story could speak English in a roaring voice), and 3) learn to fly like a dragon.
To look like a dragon, the dog decides to cover himself in shining seeds all over to mirror the shimmering scales of the dragon. The dog wasn’t a thief, so he learned how to farm and grew all the seeds he needed by himself. To talk like a dragon, the dog realized that while he would never be able to speak English (since he didn’t have a human tongue), he could learn how to read and write (which he learned how to do). To fly like a dragon, the dog learned how to operate the pulley system the farmer used to raise and lower bales of hay in the barn, learning how to fly up and down. Each step of the way, the dog eagerly shared his learnings and innovations with his fellow dogs, but at every time, the dogs greeted him with scorn and ridicule, reminding him that he was just a stupid, common dog and clearly not a dragon. The dog was very dejected.
Suddenly though, there was an emergency. The farmer’s baby had fallen into a well. The dog quickly acted; he scratched ‘lower me’ in the dirt, tied himself to the pulley system used by the farmer to get water, and once lowered, the dog rescued the baby. Later that night, he was invited into the house to dine with the farmer’s family where he got to eat the fruits of his own produce.
There are two endings to the story. Here’s the first:
That night, it rained on the other dogs who slept outside in the cold barn, which leaked. But the little dog snuggled into a warm bed beside the fire, hugged by the farmer's children, his belly full. And as he did the dog, sadly thought to himself, 'I could not become a dragon. I am an utter and complete failure that.'
After one of the characters expresses shock that the dog could ever view himself as a failure after everything he learned, the character sharing the story told the alternative ending:
That night, the little dog snuggled into a warm bed beside the fire, hugged by all the farmers' children, his belly. That night, the little dog snuggled into a warm bed beside the fire, hugged by the farmer's children has belly full and as he did the dog thought to himself, I doubt any dragon ever had it so good.
There’s so much to pull from this story.
First is the idea of mob mentality / peer negativity. For whatever reason, pessimism and negativity is addictive; we love beating down on others, especially those who strive to grow and achieve something great. This is especially true within peer groups, where fickle and destructive competition or conformity usually always prevails over inspiration and empowerment.
Second is the necessity of having some kind of ideal to strive for. In the case of this story, the image of the dragon was powerful enough to inspire the dog to achieve tremendous feats. For me, this raises the question, what is my dragon? What is the standard and image that I have in my mind that will keep my striving for something greater, something beyond myself? I think this is why the idea of god can be so powerful, or why people that have faith in something typically find more satisfaction and meaning in their lives than nihilists / atheists; the existence of a god, or higher power, provides an ideal to strive towards.
The most powerful takeaway for me is the idea of perspective. In the first ending, the dog viewed itself as a failure because it was holding itself to an impossible standard; it literally could never become a dragon, and that impossible standard left the dog utterly blind to the greatness it had already achieved. In what ways are we holding ourselves to unreasonable and impossible standards that leave us feeling hopeless? Like in the second ending, is it possible to shift our perspective and find magic and inspiration in the seemingly mundane capabilities that we all have that we constantly take for granted? I think we have more power to write our own endings and our own stories than we maybe realize.
The two characters had a beautiful little exchange after the conclusion of the story. Kaladin, a character who is dealing with horrible anxiety and depression, says this after hearing the story:
“It won’t be like that for me,” Kaladin said. “You told me it would get worse.”
“It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.”
You will be warm again. So powerful, and its a thought I always find myself coming back to whenever I feel a little small or insecure.
eden
Most religions / mythologies have some kind of creation story that centers upon some kind of expulsion or banishment from some heavenly place. They’re all equally interesting to parse through, but the story of Adam and Eve’s is pretty interesting.
It’s a fairly straightforward story. Adam and Eve are borne into Eden as perfect beings, but the devil (disguised as a snake) tempts Eve into eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whose taste in theory would grant Adam and Eve the divine ability to distinguish between good and evil. She shares this fruit with Adam, and as a result, the two are banished from Eden to the imperfect realm of the Earth.
There’s several interesting interpretations of this original sin that, as per this story, marked the start of humanity’s existence on earth. There’s a more literal interpretation that says that the sin of falling victim to temptation is what caused their expulsion. Another interpretation says that it was a sin of delusion, namely that there exists a clean distinction between good and evil (which was the knowledge that Adam and Eve sought), that caused their expulsion. Yet another one argues that the sin was based on the formation of a separate sense of self, from the delusional idea that any material object could grant them certain knowledge or wisdom that they didn’t have already, from an over-identification with the material aspects of their body caused them to view themselves as separate and individual beings rather than as unique manifestations of the same essence.
This idea of an illusory separate self is a fascinating one; it’s very central to a lot of Eastern religious and spiritual texts. All echo the similar idea that a fixation with the material aspects of life and the material aspects of our identities is an illusion that is the core of all of our suffering, and that part of our purpose on this earth is to transcend this illusion and learn to see things as they really are.
The most interesting idea that I find from the story of Eden (and one that’s pretty common between most creation stories) is the idea of separation, that the fundamental tragedy of our human existence is that the world we inhabit is separate from the world in which we’ll find the most perfect sense of love and bliss. It essentially explains all of the fear and pain that we experience as manifestations of our inability to recreate a perfect Eden on this world, as manifestations the dissonance that comes from our desire to inhabit Eden with the realities of our imperfect and impermanent existence. I think it’s a powerful idea, and one that potentially explains the power of a consistent gratitude practice; each expression of gratitude, or awe, or excitement helps us see and discover Eden-like beauty and bliss within our own lives, and that discovery helps stem the feelings of alienation and separation that in theory are the foundation of all of our pain.
Right now, life is pretty crazy. Things are changing and happening so fast, and it feels like things that maybe made sense to me a few months ago make no sense at all anymore, and I’m in that uncomfortable phase where I feel like I’m waiting for things to make sense again. I don’t know if any of that made sense, but I don’t really know how else to describe that feeling.
But stories like the ones above are helping me put the uncertainty I’m grappling with every day into perspective. Reading and re-reading these stories and finding new narratives to learn from gives me lots of lenses from which to self-reflect and unpack the happenings of my life.
My brain keeps telling that the steps I’m taking every day and the perspective I’m gaining will undoubtedly lead me to the experiences that I desire. Now I just have to believe it in my heart.