That, Anyway, Is What I Have Learned

I've learned many things during my time spent in LIT285, a class of "true stories", including the fact that learning is merely remembering. I've learned to invoke Mnemosyne to reclaim all these interesting things I've forgotten and to invoke her nine daughters, the muses, to put words to them. I'd forgotten about separations, creations, and the good ol' days. I'd forgotten about initiations, suffering, and the stories they create. I'd forgotten about returns, unveilings, and the retrospection they bring.

I remember now, how everything is perfect in the beginning. What you could call the age of innocence. When everything was simple. We didn't have to worry slaying monsters, founding cities, or solving riddles. Your greatest daily challenge may have been convincing your parents to let a friend come over to the house. Days composed of cocoa puffs and cartoons.  Things were peaceful, quiet, boring.

Things never stay this way for long. Soon enough, the cruel reality of life slaps us in the face. People we love die. Friends betray our trust. Our bodies get cut, bruised, and broken. Like Heracles or Theseus, we are faced with trials and obstacles to overcome, albeit not as cool ones. Trials that seem insurmountable at times. However, we fight our daily fights, and scars are what we get in return. Scars that we receive and those that we give others. The lives we lead become defined by those scars and the stories of how we got them.

The struggle can't go on forever, though. Eventually, we're faced with a challenge that we can't overcome. For many of us who lead less dangerous and likely less interesting lives, this challenge will be old age. A time to reflect on what we've accomplished and share our tales with anyone wise enough to learn from our mistakes. A time to return home to the darkness from which we came.

Our lives and our stories do not have a simple beginning and an end quite like I've outlined. In reality, we are rarely concerned with the story of an individual in it's entirety, and not unlike the Arabian Nights, The Golden Ass, or Sexson's story about the lady next to him on the plane, the best of our stories contain more stories within them. When it comes time to divulge the grand narratives we've experienced, we draw upon the techniques of our favorite story tellers, the ones who enchanted us with their adventures. We also draw upon the same material. Love, lust, war, betrayal, heroes, villains, and monsters. The chain of borrowed techniques goes beyond our storytellers. It goes back to your storyteller's storyteller. All the way back. To the very beginning. To the myths which set the precedence for every story that would be told there after. To stories of snakes and women. And in this way, the stories of old live on in ours.

We don't have to look very far to see the myths replaying themselves out around us everyday. We see our sports heroes and modern Achilles and Heracles. We name our wines and pubs in honor of Bacchus. We create our super heroes in parallel with Oedipus, Theseus, Christ, and others. People often fantasize about Cinderella situations which is an update of Cupid and Psyche, or Rhodopis. Five days out of the week carry the names of Norse and Roman gods. With a little imagination, we can even find the Odyssey in an average day in Dublin June 16th, 1904. However, if you ever feel like you're Megara in your marriage, get out, get out while you can! Your step mother-in-law is quite obviously plotting to kill you because you're holding back her little boy. But I digress, we displace myths everyday. It's just a matter of being able to see them and craft them into the stories to pass on to those around us.

That, anyway, is what I have learned. Or perhaps, remembered.