Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Toward a Personal Mythology


In the last week or so, my lack of active posting on here has given me some time to reflect on where I've come and where I want to go. As eerily strange, wacky, and new this whole "blogging" thing still is, I'm trying to overlook all the strangeness and blaze on mightily into the unknown.

I'm certainly not doing this "just to do it," but rather because I feel certain that I have something to offer... something to share... something to bring forth that has not yet been realized. Arriving at this destination is the constant goal... a goal that is perhaps never fully reached, but increasingly approached with well-spent time. Mine is quest to avoid "being like everyone else" and instead embracing the path that is mine alone to follow. Somewhat feeling I've "lost the path" in recent weeks, I've taken some leisurely time to collect thoughts before pushing on.

My most recent realization in regard to this has to do with my interest, focus, and fascination with personal mythology. This is a term or concept that is still raw and unrefined and being thrown around in my head, but the "direction" from which this call comes is as real as anything. It is to adventure in this "direction" which is my concern; not merely the term I use to describe it.

"Personal mythology," to the best of my recollection, is a term I first heard used by Joseph Campbell. In recent days I've been scouring my mind, thinking back hard to the time when this concept first took root in my mind. I don't have the definitive answer yet, but the seeking is well underway.

"Mythology" I might loosely desribe as the story we tell ourselves to put our life experience into metaphorical context. A keyword here is story -- a word I hope to explore thoroughly in future posts. I've come to realize how intertwined the concept of storytelling is with our human condition -- whether we're consciously aware of it or not.

What brings the "personal" to this term "mythology" has to do the system of metaphors we personally choose to make sense of our individual lives. This is, as I currently may surmise, something that is done far more or far less by each different person. For some this is done consciously, for some it is done unconsiously. For some, I think, there is nothing "personal" about their mythology (religion, etc) at all -- it exists strictly as something inherited by them by their family, culture, society, etc.

I want to focus on the self-lived mythology created by the individual to make sense of their life. This is what concerns me. This is what I want to focus on. This is the direction I plan to go. As vague as my previous paragraphs may be, my concern exists not with them (at the moment) but in the direction in which I plan to go. Toward a personal mythology and musings thereof.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey,

What is it with girls fighting?

BigMike


gross-videos.com