"There is a big difference in whether or not one has a child grow up with fairy tales. (...) If fairy tales have not been given, this shows itself in later years in weariness of life, in boredom. What is absorbed little by little by means of fairy tales emerges subsequently as joy in life, in the meaning of life -it comes to light in the ability to cope with life, even into old age. Whoever is not capable of living with ideas that have no reality for the physical plane "dies" for the spiritual world." Rudolf Steiner.
I love this quote by Steiner, especially when he speaks about our need to be able to live with ideas that have "no reality for the physical plane"...
As a society, we put logic above all and we tend to think of the symbolic and the absurd as unnecessary.
As a society, we put logic above all and we tend to think of the symbolic and the absurd as unnecessary.
Of course, we love to escape with fantasy novels and films or giggle at the nonsensical rhyme in a children's book, we tolerate them in our world only because they make us laugh or help us relax.
But we still think of it as junk food for the mind, it keeps the mind busy, but the effects are considered non-existent.
The greeks recognized two ways of explaining the world: Mythos and Logos: stories and logic.
However, we have cut down one of the branches of this tree, not that we don't explain the world through stories anymore, but we don't value the mythos side of our understanding. Words like "it's all a myth..." show that we distrust information that has not been processed by the recognized and approved filters, namely: logic, explanations using observable facts, controlled experiments, and deductive proofs.
Oh, but of course it's all a lie! Studies after studies have shown that we are not really the rational 'logos' thinkers that we train ourselves to be, our brains are wired for stories and we base some of the most important decisions of our lives on it. The problem is that having been trained to avoid mythos-based decisions we blame ourselves for it. We lose valuable time resisting it, double guessing even triple guessing ourselves, when we could just trust that valid and beautiful decisions are made by listening to the flow of the deep river of story within us.
There is one crucial decision we take once (or several times) in our life which we usually don't rely on logic for: our life partner.
After all, was there ever a logical way to fall in love?
When we think of love -maybe because it's one of the rare topics on which we don't expect to make a rational decision- we can easily realize the huge influence of stories on our way of perceiving the world.
Myth as a way of perceiving the world is behind all the decisions we make even those considered to be the realm of rational thinking like: investment, career moves or mortuary arrangements where we usually don't admit to using anything but the purest form of our all powerful logical mind, uncut, undiluted...yeah, sure, right!
We all live in the story, in one huge tapestry of story woven from a thousand threads gathered all around us. And it's a blessing, because these stories help us connect with our senses, trust that there is something magical in this world and like good ol' Steiner puts it emerge as joy in life.
So... what about boldly reclaiming mythos as a way of perceiving the world on equal ground with logos? What about justifying walking through new doors, or courageously slamming old ones, not by saying that it was the logical thing to do, but that it was in tune with our story. How about listening to the mermaids' call, letting ourselves be trapped on the island of desire always knowing that our ship is waiting and that the story will bring us to Ithaca?
We are as much the children of Homer as we are those of Plato, so what about honoring the lessons received from both branches of the tree and letting the winds of the mediterranean take our ship on the adventure of a lifetime?
Open the window, and scream a new name for the princess before it's too late, tell the raging sky that "yes, I believe in stories!" before the winds of chaos and disenchantment have ravaged the beautiful symbolic kingdom where humans have found and left all keys ever since the dawn of humanity, ever since they started to gather around fires to sing kingdoms of sand, mist and magic into reality...
