Rendering Our Own Legends

The larger than life fantasy characters I love watching in the theater and that I so enjoyed reading about in my middle school library have an important role to play as they can inspire us to be kinder, more generous, more courageous, and better friends and teammates. But our personal life myths are also important because they can teach us how we can become our best selves. And so often the less than glamorous parts of life set us up to be in a position to be courageous when courage is needed.

Comic Con returned to San Diego last week, and although I haven’t been the most avid fan of all things comic books, I’ve long had a fascination with myths and legends. I remember there was a book in my middle school library full of greek myths. When I think of it, I can even remember what shelf it was on and the design on the cover because I read through it so many times.

I doubt I had any clear sense of why greek myths appealed so much to me, but now that I’ve had a couple of decades-worth of reflection, it was the fact that in most of the stories, the heroes triumph against impossible odds and overcame huge obstacles to come to important realizations about themselves and their place in the world. And of course, that is perhaps one of the most pervasive story lines of literature. But why does that storyline draw us in so much?

Perhaps it’s because we recognize that we are a very small piece of a huge, immensely complex human system and we like the thought of a single person saving the day or the world. Whether it be Captain Marvel or Harry Potter or Perseus, all of these hero figures found ways of conquering their own demons as well as the evil forces threatening the world.

I don’t know about you, but my life doesn’t seem quite as clear cut as that though. The evils I face are much subtler and most often arise from my own person rather than some clear and present threat to all humanity. And things like not sleeping enough, or working to much or not keeping better tabs on what I’m eating or forgetting to do my mindfulness exercises tend to build an accumulative effect that makes me less productive, less happy, and ultimately less triumphant than I could be. We never see those kinds of real effects on the heroes we celebrate on the big screen, but in the world of real life, those are the sorts of elements that can really impact our success.

And you know, the reason why we don’t see our big screen heroes doing those sorts of activities like sleeping and mediating and cooking regular but healthy food? I think it’s because they’re kind of boring. It’s exciting to destroy monsters. It’s less exciting to heat up quinoa. So this is what I’ve decided I need to do: I need to write my own mythology for my own life.

The larger than life characters I love watching in the theater and that I so enjoyed reading about in my middle school library have an important role to play, too. They can inspire us to be kinder, more generous, more courageous, and better friends and teammates. But our personal life myths are also important because they can teach us how we can become our best selves. And so often the less than glamorous parts of life set us up to be in a position to take those big chances or to be courageous when that is called for. So, we can enjoy our comic book heroes and we can also train ourselves to live true to the legends we set for ourselves.