A few weeks back I wrote about Fr. Richard Rohr's book, Falling Upward. One of the many insightful observations Rohr makes about what he describes as our first half of life behaviors is the degree to which we mythologize our past. Words matter so please allow me to be precise about my use of this one. The Oxford English Dictionary offers two definitions of the word myth:
a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
a widely held but false belief or idea.
Not to confuse matters, but when I speak of mythologizing our past, I mean it in both senses of the word. Who we are, at least who we see ourselves as is based on a carefully constructed narrative we have built over the years, beginning in our childhood when stories hold special significance and the way we see the world around us is not informed by reasoning as much as impression. It is in a sense a time when everything that occurs is super natural. Cause and effect only come later as we begin to develop our intellect. Our infant impressions form the narrative and while logic, language and reason will eventually overtake our initial attempt to make sense of this new world into which we have been born, the narrative lives on.
Psychologists have described the human personality in a variety of ways. Perhaps you are familiar with the Freudian concept of an id, ego, and superego. We might think of the id is the self gratifying part of us that seeks pleasure and wishes to avoid pain, the earliest part of our personality to emerge. The ego, our conscious self that mediates between the id and super ego begins to manifest around the age of three and typically continues its early stage development through age six. While the super ego, our rule maker--the judgmental moralizer is internalized around the age of five.
You don't need to subscribe to Freud's archetypes, and modern psychology offers an analog to them in the form of the child, mother and father that live within us. Gender stereotypes aside most of us are at least familiar with the willful child self, and have sporadic memory of our own early years. Our parents or caregivers bore the responsibility of providing us with both unconditional and conditional love--that is nurture along with rules for survival. And as we grew older and more able to reason the echo of those two forces ideally helped us evolve into a whole being complete with both empathy and moral structure.
But deep down inside us linger those early childhood memories and the narratives we created around them--the ones we made up to help our infant brains make some sense of the world and those form the myths that we perpetuate throughout our adult lives. When we try to explain ourselves to ourselves those are the stories on which we unconsciously rely. And just like primitive folk tales they are myths; if not false beliefs than at least exaggerated ones about our past that we accept as truth. These myths are so firmly embedded in us that without our knowledge we continue to view ourselves and others in their context.
If, for example we were not nurtured to the degree we needed we might view one or another of our parents as withholding, unloving or aloof. We may become needy, or witholding ourselves depending on how we processed those behaviors. Perhaps we were subjected to inflexibility, with many rules and punishments. As adults, we may reject, even violently, restrictions placed on us in adult life or become a rigid enforcer ourselves. It never occurs to us as we age to question what was really happening , who our parents, caregivers and influencers really were and what motivated their behaviors. Instead we perpetuate the myths we created to explain who and why we are the way we are.
The classical myth is the journey of the hero so brilliantly described by Joseph Campbell. I could hardly do justice to it here, but in very schematic terms it describes a story familiar to us all. The Heroine or Hero (us) is called to an adventure. She or he will refuse the call at first to remain with the familiar, but eventually the lure becomes too great and by some means a mentor or guide assists in an escape into the world severing ties with the past. Venturing into the unknown the hero will experience many trials, adversities and temptations not least the realization that his or her parents were in fact mortal and flawed. Eventually, with or without help, the hero accomplishes whatever he or she was called to do--and reluctantly with yet more trials ahead eventually returns to her or his former world, forever changed and now able to mediate between the temporal and spiritual self. This is the journey of the self.
If this story sounds familiar it should. It is the basis of most fairy tales, a story line found in virtually every culture and famously the story of Odysseus as told by Homer. Rohr tells us that it is to a degree the narrative of our first life experience. It describes how we grow to adulthood, make our way into the "real world" and experience the trials and tribulations thereof. Unlike the mythic hero, however, we may never return from our journey, never realize that our narrative is untrue, our parents all too human, victims themselves. We may not forgive them, we may become them. We may accomplish our mission gathering riches to us or fail and founder amidst the world's cruel realities and never resolve our higher selves with our material aspirations, never live without fear of past or future.
Falling Upward is about completing the journey and reconciling our spiritual and material selves in a second half of life experience. It also provides us with a tremendously valuable insight into how we view ourselves, our past and those who played key roles in our upbringing. If we wish to be the heroes of our own lives we too must complete the journey, abandon the false narratives that have held us prisoner, forgive those who we may blame for our flaws, and free ourselves to live without recrimination or fear. Maybe we'll pass each other on that road.
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