Family Mythology
One major area of interest for me is family stories and their influence on the individual. Here is an excerpt from a paper I wrote on the topic:
Human beings are joined by their universal desire and ability to
construct and tell stories. Narrative is said to be the only
art that exists in all cultures. It is through the story form
that we impose an order upon the seemingly random and never-ending series of events, large and small, that compose our
existence.
The human obsession with pattern may be closely related to our
common longing for order and closure. To completely grasp and
fully identify a pattern, it must be observed from beginning to
end. Unfortunately, although nature abounds with patterns, few
provide us with points of definite closure. Even death, the
ultimate closure of a person's life, can be seen as marking the
beginning of another pattern. Of all humankind's inventions
based on pattern, stories are perhaps the only invention that
has the potential of fully satisfying this need for closure.
Stories are things that can end and be observed and analyzed as
a completed whole. Stories are manageable models of life.
One of the most important stories an individual learns to
construct is the story of his/her own life. This story would
seem to begin with the entrance of the star of the show -- the
birth of an individual into a family. However, offstage
characters that never actually appear during the individual's
life drama have a significant, part to play. Elizabeth Stone,
author of Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family
Stories Shape Us, argues that the identity of one's ancestors
forms an important detail in the construction of this life story:
- Family stories seem to persist in importance even when people
think of themselves individually, without regard to their
familiar roles. The particular human chain we're part of is
central to our individual identity. Even if we loathe our
families, we need to know about them, just as a prologue. Not
to know is to live with some of the disorientation and anxiety
of the amnesiac.
Not only do these stories provide us with crucial background
information, it is through the examples of family stones that we
learn how to create, listen to, and tell stories. We hear
hundreds of stories as children. A typical example of a
children's story would be the
Goldilocks/Red Riding Hood type tale about a child who falls
into great danger resulting from some sort of disregard for
parental prohibitions. These stories are designed to orient us
to our new environment and teach us its rules. From the strong
pedagogical slant in these early stories, individuals learn to
look for meanings and morals in these narratives. Unconsciously
upon the end of a tale, we always ask, "But what was the point?"
story told that has no point can be as frustrating as a joke
with no punchline.
So much storytelling takes place during these formative years
that communications experts contend that we subliminally learn
to associate storytelling situations with a parent/child power
relationship for the rest of our lives. Unspoken rules of
conversation give the speaker the floor for the duration of
his/her tale. Unsolicited comments from listeners are called
interruptions and often considered impolite unless excused by
the storyteller. As we learn family stories, we are taught our
first grammar of narrative.