Myths, told for their own sake, are not stories that have meanings but stories that give meanings.*
(James Carse)

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills, we need guides to show us how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people.**
(Ursula Le Guin)

To provoke is to call forth.

Myths are provocative.

Myths call forth a story from our lives. Not some repeat of the myth, but something that may only find expression through our lives:

We resonate with myth when it resounds in us. A myth resounds in me when its voice is heard in mine but not heard as mine.*

If we want a teacher or guide so we might find our lives and live them large, there are few better than the great stories and myths passed to us.

*From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
**From Ursula Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter.