This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were telling a story.*
Jean-Paul Sartre

Marginalising the ego, abandoning it to the circumference, is a way of entering the soul. In fact it might be more accurate to say that marginalising the ego is precisely the work of the soul.**
James Carse

Back in 2011, I picked up a copy of
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and at
fifty two years of age I was going to be helped to reframe and embrace
many of the stories of my life in a different way –
The myth leads us from our ordinary world into a
special world of challenges and threats, and death and life moments,
Forging who we can be and what we must do with our lives for the sake of others;
We bring these tropes back to our ordinary world towards living
selflessly, generously, and wisely.

Every life looks different from the perspective of a myth.

*Dan McAdams’ The Stories We Live By;
**James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.