can we talk about mythology for a second?

as a teenager, i was incredibly fascinated with Greek mythology. i carried around my volume of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology until its black paperback cover was veined with tiny white wrinkles. i could recite the tales and their lessons. fables and religion seemed interchangeable to me, and if you think about it, why shouldn’t they be?

we take our gods to different lands with us, we give them names, we anthropomorphize them. we weave stories greater than ourselves to explain ourselves. they live only as long as we believe in them. we give them flaws to shed clarity on our own. they exist only in the ways we allow them to exist. we point to their mistakes and say “goodness, that looks familiar, but we should know better.” but should we? a.k.a. how morals came about.

our concept of mortality is bearable because of the timid (yet stubbornly omnipresent) hope that we (a part of us? our stories? our souls?) will live beyond this world in some way. this is why the ideas of “legend” and “legacy” exist.

also, in some way, the way we believe gods to control us, controls them.

anyway. some notes:

“The mind knows only what lies near the heart.”

“Love cannot live where there is no trust.”

(ooooh, inevitability! thinking about this a lot lately):
“Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it burns. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart.”

“The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.”