"Mythology is the truth, history is fact"

When I heard this quote in class the other day, I started thinking of the concept of facts and their irrelevance in terms of truth. In a forward thinking, scientifically minded society like the one we live in, we strive to look at our lives, past of present, objectively. We think that, regardless of intuition, perception, or emotion, there lies a single standard of truth or fact that unites us all....only...by doing so, we lose all the intricacies of this greater picture. We try so hard to discover an objective truth only to find that we can never be fully objective. Why?

We are all subjective observers of our world, each with our own truths. Perhaps, somewhere, there exists one unifying truth, a factual basis for all our actions, but we, as human beings can never know what that basis is. Our only means of understanding our world is by observation, followed by reason. Observation is inexorably tied to perception, therefore, we can never distance ourselves from our own individualized perspectives of the world as a whole in order to see a clear base line....if such a thing truly exists. We like to think of the "circumstantially bounded" definitions of who we are as individuals or what really happened at any point in time as the totality of our existence....or importance. For example, when meeting someone for the first time, the most important question we ask (for we always ask it) is "what do you do for a living?". This single question is followed by other vital questions such as "where are you from?" or "how old are you?", for college students, this question is "what's your major?". It makes no difference to us what a person believes, what they fear or hope for...what they live for. Our only concern is with circumstance, as if this were vital, important, or true. Why are we so hung up on the basest definition of who a person is?

I rarely think of myself as an "American" or a "Montanan" or even a "college student". I know I am so much more than that "circumstatially bounded" definition of who I am. Where I was born is of no consequence when compared to what I believe. I would rather be seen for the totality of who I am rather than confined by the fixed classification of who I appear to be. Time and place do not define who we are, we do.

"Mythology is truth, history is fact". Perhaps what is meant by this is that mythology is the creation of man by man, his attempt to understand human nature through the relative truth inherent in all living beings. Mythology lies closer to truth because it allows for subjectivity, relativity. It allows for emotion, drama, movement and spans the full range of human interaction. Myths are timeless, living things that refuse to be confined in a linear fashion to a historical timeline. They defy our need to contain and classify, to pin things down nice and neatly in whatever we determine to be factual truth.

What if we allowed ourselves to let go of simple definitions and mindless classifications? Would our structured little society descend into chaos? Or would we, by letting go of our rigidity, our passivity, become fuller versions of who we are, regardless of the paltry definitions that keep us rooted in linear time. While we remain confined by the limitations of our "circumstatially bounded" selves, can we ever really know the fullness of who we are, who we can be?