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| Me with one of my books |
When I took a Greek and
roman mythology class last semester, I had
no idea what to expect. But as we
studied the history and culture of the Greece, I came to realize that we
weren't just learning about this civilization. We were learning about people,
with the same feelings and questions as us, even if they are removed by time.
They came up with stories to
explain what they saw, and to teach moral standards or lessons. Why do the
seasons change? Demeter is in mourning for her daughter. How should I behave?
Look to Apollo, a monument of physical and intellectual perfection. As a writer
myself, I can relate to these early story tellers. I also want to find meaning
through stories, and in that class I found how relevant Greek myths are today. We can all relate
to the people in these stories, who are often not quite perfect, put into
situations that are definitely not ideal.
To me, this was a good
reminder that if we can relate to people from thousands of years ago, we can
certainly make an effort to relate to those around us.
Great blog Brooke. When I was reading about Greek culture and got to an article talking about what little children would do for fun, I was struck. These were real people with needs to attend to and fun to be had!
ReplyDeleteIt's true that we can see a lot of similarities between ourselves and characters from Greek mythology. This post makes me wonder how the original authors of the myths came up with their ideas and how those ideas came to be believed as absolute facts.
ReplyDeleteBrooke, I saw your post right before posting mine...one mythology as well. I'm feeling like I can relate with you! Those connections we can find are so cool. I think it is a testament that as humans we really are all related. On a religious note (I love that we can do that at BYU), we are all children of God. Maybe that's part of the reason we can find similarities.
ReplyDeleteI thought it interesting that you said they made up stories to explain what was around them. I wonder how often we have our story wrong and we just make up a story in our head to explain why someone is acting a certain way etc... You are right it's important to put ourselves in others shoes and not just assume we are different or assume we know what they are thinking.
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