I've always felt awe reading Joseph Cambell's works. Titles like The Hero With A Thousand Faces, The Masks of God and The Power Of Myth (with Bill Moyers), or The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler (based on Campbell's writings) always leave me in a much more centered and capable state.

The idea of myth as foundation for our lives is one which, for me, has unveiled itself as essentially true over time. On the surface of it, the theory looks good and you can feel it fit itself into an easy explanation of your history. But as experience in life and love and being sentient in our universe builds, it's still easy, and it works to explain what otherwise might seem unexplainable.

It's similar to breaking language down to the logic of its symbolic components. Myths, of all varieties, provide a base framework of continuity and context. They both build our lives and interactions and are created by those same situations. The details change for each protagonist: unwed mother, aging rocker, introverted geek, Zen nihilist, struggling writer, Luciferian, progressive Christian, lost addict, vegetarian, capitalist, communist, rich man, loyal friend, kept woman, pre-meditated murderer, peace keeper, husband, wife, ad infinitum... but the essential mythic structures in each life will be of similar form. It's why being human means we're more alike than different. It's why people can't understand the details of a life, but can empathize with the difficulty or joy of a situation.

There's the trick; there's my incantation: look beyond your details. See the shape of your life and how it relates to the shapes of others. If you can convey the shape of it, the myth you live and live by, you'll be able to connect with and uncover united meaning with everyone: the parts they play in your story, the roles you play in their own.

Once you realize the mythic form of the stories you tell yourself, the plot you write for your life, you're free to climb Mount Olympus. Mythic structure makes you human; it also fashions gods.