It is one thing to experience mythology, it is another to create it. Now that I read that last sentence, it sounds incredibly self-important and melodramatic, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't true. When we are learning how to do anything, read, write, drive, do our taxes, the process is two steps. What do people always say? Watch and learn. But there is an implicit third part to that statement: watch, learn, then do. The "doing" is an incredibly important part to the learning process. We first observe, taking in all the information we can on technique, then we apply it. Creating my silly little myth about brain rot with silly little characters with silly little names was the "doing."
Through the act of creating my own myth, I feel like a I got a much better grasp of the basic elements that make a myth work. When reading old mythology, often characters or plot points seem absurd. What do you mean Cronos ate his children? What do you mean Izanagi created the islands with a spear? The events themselves are nonsensical, but it is intentionally done so to create a fictional reality. This fictional reality is one of godhood, where a sneeze can be an act of creation. For mere mortals like us, we could never imagine creating life by simply having a thought, but for deities, that's just another Tuesday. So in creating my myth, I tried to tap into this alternate reality where grand acts of creation or as simple as a wave of the hand.
In doing so, I began to understand mythology a lot more, and perhaps, glimpsed its purpose. When I was a young kid, my family would all drive to Las Vegas together. I'd see the mountains in the desert and say, "They look like sleeping giants!" We would make up silly stories about who these giants might be, why they're sleepy, what might wake them up. We'd give them names and backstories; we would create a mythology. It didn't matter whether or not the story was real, it created a sense of shared experience while connecting us to the natural world. Humans create myths all the time. We tell silly stories about that squirrel in the park, or why that billboard has been there so long, or how Jared Leto keeps getting work. We tell these stories to connect to each other and invite an opportunity for shared experience. It's almost like a cultural inside joke. But of course, that's just how it feels to me. Perhaps you feel differently.
