Searching through the bookshelves this week, I came upon a book I scarcely remember reading but examining it, I saw that I had turned down the opening page containing a quote from author, Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room. That is the quote I've found interesting enough to post this evening. The quote is -
"The General, speaking one felt with authority, always insisted that, if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them."
I'm mulling over what "my personal myth" is......do you think you have a personal myth?
Collage - SS - "Yellow Puzzle Pieces"
Yes, I am Rev. Fr. Surfer Dude, and if that isn't a myth I don't know what is
ReplyDeleteOf course you have a personal myth. How good that you are mulling it over. Come over here. Let me help you get the speck out your eye so you can see your myth even better.
ReplyDeleteDo I have a personal myth? Well, maybe. Ouch! It feels like there is something really big in my eye. I wonder what it might be and how it got there.
it seems that the gentlemen found great humor in your question of personal myth. i wonder if that is what you intended?
ReplyDeletein looking at the meaning of "myth", the first definition says it is "a traditional story, esp. one concerning the early history of a people..." so, yes, i believe we all have a personal myth; a story that helps to define who we are. maybe it is "true" or maybe it is more perception which i believe is what the author is alluding to.
in a counseling context, it more often than not is helpful to address what someone is feeling rather than what may be the "truth", because it feels really true to them. an example of this is the person who feels alone in the middle of a crowded room. their "perception" is that they are alone.
anyway...i could really get going on this, so i am not surprised you found it underlined in your text. i have many more thoughts on personal myth that i would be happy to share :-) thanks for getting me thinking!
xoxooxox
oh, i failed to mention, i LOVE "yellow puzzle pieces"!!! is that by any chance being submitted to the mellow yellow art show?
ReplyDeleteCP - a good example of a chapter of your myth. I expect there's more than just a surfer mentality there somewhere. Not to say that surfers aren't intelligent - I mean, I should know, I'm one too!!
ReplyDeleteGeezer - the specks and the logs - I don't know that those qualify as mythical qualities. Seem more based in reality as I experience them:)
And Miss Lucy - yes, the gentlemen were very clever in their myth recognition. I wasn't really expecting much personal revelation, more as you wrote, a personal reflection probably not recorded on any blogsite.
I think I would most closely relate to your mythical analysis in counseling in examining what it is one feels to have happened, and that not necessarily being what actually happened, but the perception being there - thereby adding on to the myth we live within ourselves.
Oh, yeah there's a lot more here that I bet we take on face to face soon when we get a chance. It might just be too much for the reading audience to swallow:))
xoxo
Lucy - you got it - the yellow collage did go off to the Mellow Yellow show. Did Mr. B get his photograph entered?
ReplyDeletexoxox
Rene Girard, among others, holds that behind every myth is an event, no matter how obscured it may have become by the myth that covers it. Personal myths, if there are such things, and I suspect most jungians would say that there are, are what cover the foundational stories of our lives. Find what is romantic in the memory of a person and you will be close to a myth, and I mean romantic in the academic sense.
ReplyDeleteSincerely yours,
Rev. Fr. Surfer Dude