Your Life is the Story of Your Myth
Myths are stories we create to express how we perceive the world and life. It’s always been this way. The Greeks did it and so did the Teutons and the Polynesians — not to mention the Christians and the Hindus.
How we live our lives is determined (and often limited) by the myths we accept to live by, but a discerning view of our lives also reveal our myths to ourselves (and to anyone in the world viewing us with discerning eye).
If our lives are enactments of our myths, it behooves us to examine the content of our days — especially when you are writing a memoir or attempting to live a self-conscious life.
What are myths?
A myth is not a fantastical made-up story nor, as the word is commonly used, is it a synonym for “lie” or erroneous belief (“three myths about losing weight!”).
To know about myths, you must look at your life — at your seething feelings, at your habitual or surprising responses to others, at your choices that work or don’t work for advancing your life.
In these and other phenomena of your life is where you will learn about your myths! You will discover how your life as a myth can be finally understood.
In helping people to write their memoirs, I often point out how they, or the characters of their stories (mother, father, siblings, and so forth), seem to have lived or be living an unconscious myth.
Archetypes are the fuel myths.
If myths are stories we create to express how we perceive the world and life, then archetypes are the psychic fuel that powers them.
Dominant psychic forces, according to the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, play a powerful role in our lives. He called these strong instincts (or patterns of thought) archetypes. Just as migratory birds have an instinct to fly north and south at appropriate times, we also are said to have a form of character instinct — archetype — that governs many of our actions and reactions. These archetypes determine the contents of the personal myths by which we live our lives.
You might say, if you view your life as a myth, that myths are stories and archetypes are characters in those stories.
Throughout our lives, these archetypes interact with us — positively, negatively and sometimes alternately one way and then the other. As we write memoirs about ourselves or other people, we will notice the archetypes that play and how individuals were able to work with them on or had to struggle against them.
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Exercise #1
Fantasy can reveal what myths are operative for us.
1. Finish the following sentence as though you are telling a fairy tale: “Once there was a (man or boy) (woman or girl) who — — .” (Use your own gender for the fantasy character.) Make up a story, even a far out one, that comes readily to mind about him or her. Give your imagination free rein! Write for as long as you want. Do not read the rest of this exercise until you have done this.
2. Examples of fantasy starts: “Once there was a man who did his best in his life. He wasn’t the smartest or richest guy in the world, but he met each challenge as best he could.” “Once there was a little girl who loved to curl up in Mommy’s lap. She was so cozy there she wanted never to get up. One day, Mommy’s lap was smaller. It got smaller and smaller every day!”
3. Reread your story. In the place of “man” or “girl,” insert your own name. What does this story now say about you? (Yes, it really is about some part of you!) In what sense does the story reveal a myth in your life? How does acknowledging this myth help you to understand what you have lived and how you feel about it? How can you use this understanding to achieve more depth in your lifestories? more awareness in your life?
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Three common archetypes
The archetypes I will explore — the martyr, the orphan, and the prince-left-at-the-pauper’s-door — are only a few of the countless examples I could have chosen to help you to understand the role they play in the unfolding or our personal myths. There are many more archetypes and, if you find you are interested in learning more about this topic, read some of the many books available on the subject.
1. People who are “giving” types can be said to be “martyrs.”
They are the ones who always volunteer to take on extra tasks. As such, they are instrumental in the life of a community or organization and get much of its work done. Martin Luther King, Salvador Allende, and Mother Theresa are well-known and praiseworthy examples of the martyr archetype.
Society often clearly benefits from the sacrifices of martyrs who, pushed to their limits, are moved to give even their own lives for the higher good of the community at large.
On the negative side of this archetype is the martyr’s need to be rewarded for his sacrifices by either gratitude or dependency. If others do not appreciate their devotion, some martyrs (in the undeveloped stages) grow resentful or are deeply hurt. Martyrs don’t always understand that their giving may be crippling or intrusive to others who may need to experience life’s trials themselves in order to attain their autonomy.
The martyr may also use giving as an evasion of personal growth in other areas (e.g., “I’d love to take this self-growth workshop, but my wife is not feeling well. I can’t possibly impose on someone to stay with her the few days I’ll be gone.” The person who says she wants to write her memoir but always allows herself to be interrupted by her family’s demands is an example of the martyr. She uses giving to her husband and children as a way of avoiding her own important personal work.).
The life challenge of martyrs may be to find alternatives to giving to achieve personal fulfillment. Sometimes it is as hard for martyrs not to give as it is for selfish people to give!
As you write this person into a memoir, the challenge is to differentiate between the positive and negative aspects of this archetype when it is encountered in a memoir character. The writer needs to explore how successful the character was in combining the need to give, with the need to pursue other areas of self-growth and with others’ needs to be autonomous.
2. The “orphan” archetype is self-made.
Another example that will help to explain the relationship between myths and archetypes and how they dominate our lives is the archetype of the orphan.
People who do not develop or maintain personal ties can be said to be pursuing the orphan archetype. Artists are an example of the positive side of this archetype. Because many artists are instinctively detached or have developed detachment from roots, family, etc., they are free to tell the truth as they see it, to risk much in the pursuit of their art. Their detachment, the product of the orphan, is a positive.
On the negative side, the orphan may throw out people, opportunities, things too easily and may start again from scratch time after time — that start-up phase is exhilarating but the long-term effect is often and usually exhausting. While orphan artists make use of their rootlessness to create, other orphans may be oppressed by their tendency to abandon what they have accomplished before they can benefit from the results. We have all known people who fail to pursue contacts, who discontinue a winning experience too soon, who suddenly loose all interest in a project.
Unfortunately orphans often feel besieged by life, alone against the superior forces of the universe. In retaliation, they may react to life with cynicism and bitterness.
Orphans also love to tell you they are self-made — and will neglect to mention any help they received along the way.
The person who always tells you how he did everything for himself in life, how no one ever gave him anything, is an example of the orphan.
When writing about a person who fits the orphan archetype — whether as a character in your memoir or as the focus of the story you are ghostwriting, the lifewriter should certainly appreciate the struggle this person has waged. But she must also assess whether the orphan has been blind to the support available to him or the gifts life has offered him. Would a more objective account of his lifestory give credit elsewhere for his success or identify his cynical doomed-to-failure attitude as key to another one of his failures?
The lifewriter should also ask where the memoir subject found or made a community and how he overcame the orphan’s pervasive sense of aloneness and abandonment. Since orphans often remake the facts to support their self-made views of themselves, writers must verify from other sources the hardship stories orphans tell.
Seeing through your own archetype surfacing in myth is not east — but it can be done with careful discernment.
3. The prince-left-at-the-pauper’s-door is — well — a prince among the low-lifes.
The prince-left-at-the-pauper’s-door is imbued with a sense of his innate worth — whether justified or not. They believe they may happen to be poor at the moment but they are “princes” (or “princesses”) and have a right to special (“royal”) status in life. Princes-left-at-the-pauper’s-door aspire to be more and to have more than might seem reasonable to others and they often have the strength and courage to match their struggle to achieve.
An example of the prince-left-at-the-pauper’s-door is the immigrant who arrives in a new country penniless and sees no reason why he should not rise “from rags to riches.” This is a wonderfully positive aspect of the archetype because a more objective assessment of the situation would likely be discouraging and lead to giving up.
Another example is that of a poor child who aspires to a fine education despite inferior local schools and lack of family support. Her sense of being special fuels her ambition and lead her out of the destiny that ought to have been hers.
Of course, there is a negative side to the prince-left-at-the- pauper’s-door archetype, too. Cinderella waits for Prince Charming to save her from the unpleasant drudgeries and responsibilities of her life. These people may look disdainfully on the other “paupers” among whom they live (“What am I doing with these peons!”) and so cut themselves off from participation in the community available to them.
The prince-left-at- the-pauper’s-door may be as lonely as the orphan. Inevitably, too, the high achievers, whether disdainful of others or not, will attract the resentment of the many they leave behind.
The lifewriter must look carefully at these princes-left-at-the-pauper’s-door to distinguish which parts of their struggle were necessary and inevitable to attain their goals and which were needlessly injurious to them and others (forsaking relationships as not good enough, for instance, and choosing to remain friendless).
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Exercise #2
Fantasy can reveal what myths and archetypes are operative for us.
- Pick a feeling you have about your life or about someone you are writing about. Embody that feeling in a fantasy character. It can be superman or a TV character or a cartoon one for that matter. Or, you can simply make a name up like — Big Guy or Complaining Woman. Now tell a story of something that character has starred in.
- Let your imagination run freely.
- Reread your story. Did you learn anything interesting about yourself in this mythic venture?
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Myths are all around us.
Writing from the perspective of personal myths can explain a lot about the stories you are recording. In addition, consciously writing about archetypes in your own life and turning them into positive forces is a rewarding path for self-growth.
One way to understand the power of myth is to reflect a moment on what sorts of stories move us. The following are merely suggestions to explore. I have used the names of Roman and Greek gods for the archetypes that are being expressed.The following are not hard and fast interpretations, but I believe they point in the right direction.
- A man whose marriage is not satisfactory, whose spouse is demanding and unloving, is smitten with movies that portray loving couples. One might say he is seeking the loving wife archetype. Perhaps he dwells overly long on stories of how awful wives can be. This makes people feel awkward around him when he is this way. He needs to take care of his marriage or quit on it. (Perhaps this man is a prince who is married to a pauper?)
- A woman who is always “fighting city hall” might be said to embody the warrior archetype. She is living a Diana myth (Diana was Roman goddess of the hunt, a warrior). She needs to ask herself if she is fighting the appropriate “enemy.” Perhaps her husband or children or employer are more appropriate foci for effecting change than the public library’s overdue-fine policy. This woman who feels unappreciated my be telling stories about neglect (martyr) and abandonment (orphan).
Archetypes are inclinations — they are not fixed and rigid.
Although archetypes can be compared to animal instincts, they are not as fixed. They are inclinations that we are both born with and molded into, and they are strengthened by many factors.
- The man with the unloving wife [example above] may have come from an unloving family and is constantly seeking to recreate a more loving family of origin. This may frustrate his wife no end.
- The woman who is “fighting city hall” may be reacting to having been unjustly treated — either once too many times or when she was powerless to defend herself.
Memoir writing, because it brings us face to face with the various archetypes that dictate our personal myths, enables us to become more self-aware.
- Writing from the perspective of personal myth can explain a lot about the stories you and your characters have lived.
- In addition, consciously living archetypes in your own life and turning them into positive forces is a rewarding path for self-growth.
Our archetypes are not the only elements that create our personal myths. The responses of other people and the characteristics of the culture we live in play significant, complex roles.
Birth order is also one factor that triggers archetypes in the creation of personal myth making.
- Older children, for instance, tend to be rewarded for being martyrs. Parents need their help to manage the younger ones. Encouraging the oldest child to be an orphan, a wanderer or a dreamer would get in the way of the routine tasks of maintaining a large family. (An older child whose dominant archetype is the orphan, wanderer or dreamer may compromise and assume the role of victim or martyr. This fits the parents’ goal but exacts its revenge by possibly casting guilt on them.)
- The youngest child sometimes has older parents who are financially at ease They may be ready to have more fun as parents than they could with the older children. They encourage “the baby” to take on the archetype of magician or clown. The baby can then be a playful person who is both more fun to be with and less likely to grow up too fast and move away from the parents. Unfortunately, such person can eschew adult responsibilities.
- People who have risen out of modest backgrounds and achieved much are often rejected by their siblings and former friends who have not achieved as much. This, in turn, produces a set of responses that are embodied in personal myth — one of which is to hold on to the orphan archetype.
Memoir writing, because it enables us to become aware of various elements that create our personal myths, empowers us to choose the stories we will live out in our lives. As you write about yourself or other people, be attentive to your active personal myths and interpret your stories in light of them.
Know, too, that the story of your life not yet finished! Insights you gain from exploring the past can be put to good use in your present and your future.
Carl Jung wrote, “People must not dissolve into a whirl of warring possibilities and tendencies imposed upon them by the unconscious, but must become the unity that embraces all possibilities and tendencies.”
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Exercise #3
1. Take a story or vignette which you are either working on currently or which has given you much difficulty in composing.
2. Find the action of the story (the plot). What is happening in the story? Write a sentence to express that.
3. Now take the characters (you and other people) and rewrite the story using mythic characters (Roman gods, comic book superheroes, movie hero stories [Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker] ). Make the scope of the story large. This may feel “spoofy” to you but do it anyway.
4. Do you see some life and death struggle going on? Your adolescent struggle with your mother may be no less than a life and death struggle as you were attempting to be the person you wanted and needed to become and she was intent on keeping you the person she wanted you to become or remain.
5. Now, using the possibly inflated narrative you have just created, rewrite the memoir vignette so that it reflects something of the [personally] mythic struggle.
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Good luck understanding the myths you live by.
Remember: whatever you do today, write a bit on your memoir.
