Everybody Loves Mythos.

As I sat in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse tonight listening to Greg Mortenson talk, my train of thought kept lingering on the same idea. It began with my observation that Mortenson was mostly telling stories to convey his message, which reminded me of Nicholas Kristof's lecture about a month ago, in which he almost explicitly told stories to educate the audience.

"God loves mythos," the words of Dr. Sexson keep repeating in my mind for some reason. The more I think about it, the more I know it's not only God who loves mythos—everybody loves mythos.

If the most fun thing to do (as I've been told) is sit around and tell stories, that implies that everybody loves mythos. Personally, I think the most fun thing to do is create stories—in the sense of living what the story is about.

"We are all characters in literature,"which is another interesting Sexson quote, basically says that we create and live mythos every day. Whether this is for God's amusement or for our personal retellings is up for debate, but its truth cannot be denied. We are all characters in literature, regardless of whether somebody has written the book yet.

Our lives are mythos, the Bible is mythos. The Bible as mythos supposedly explains the fact that there is so much conflict in it. On a related note, the conflict of women's education vs. cultural expectations created Kristof and Mortenson's stories. Human lives certainly revolve around conflict—with the environment, each other, and ourselves. There would be no good without bad, there would be no conflict without bad, there would be no mythos without conflict. The best stories may have been terrible to live, but that doesn't make their retelling any less interesting.

All forms of modern entertainment revolve around mythos, however rudimentary. TV shows. Movies. Books. Plays. Songs. Art. Everything has a story. Everything is mythos.

Everybody loves mythos. What would the world be without it?