When I began by college career four years ago, I engaged the
study of myth with the same popular assumption that it was all just fiction.
However, I have grown to respect and cherish the myths in my life and value
their role in composing who I am as a person. I have recognized the deep
necessity for human beings to share stories. As creatures of language, it is a
fundamental tool in our identity making to look at examples of the past in
order to construct our future. While myth may not be a retelling of history as
it actually happened, it does provide important understanding of the ways in
which people found meaning. Myth and story-telling allow us to pause our daily lives
and reflect on the past and where we want our future to go. By only engaging
myth as fictitious nonsense, we lose essential characteristics for what it
means to be human. Children allow themselves to be swept away by stories in the
same way that peoples of the past would relive their ancestry through myths.
.C.S. Lewis invites his readers to jump back into the childhood dream and
engage their curious propensity to as “why” and “how”.
No comments:
Post a Comment