When I reached adolescent angst, I adopted two songs as my life anthems. One was “I Am a Rock” by Simon and Garfunkel. The other is a song called “I’ll Sing in the Sunshine” by Gale Garnett. Part of the lyrics from the Gale Garnett song: “I will never love you, the cost of love’s too dear. Though I’ll never love you, I’ll stay with you one year.” Art and Paul, of course, sang: “A rock feels no pain, and an island never cries.”
I latched onto those songs as if they held life’s great truths. They fit what life had taught me to that point, hardened those misinterpretations into a world view I would carry for decades.
Most of us develop myths about ourselves, our families, our talents, our dreams. And those myths become the creaky foundation on which we build our lives. Like most myths, some of them are rooted in a great truth. Others are nothing more than fairy tales — in other words, they’re big fat lies that we’ve given the weight of truth.
The big fat lies that shaped my life:
- I’m the strong one. I can get anywhere on sheer will power.
- I’m alone on my island. No one gets on. No one gets off.
- If we don’t talk about it, it doesn’t matter or it doesn’t exist. Take your pick.
These are false beliefs about myself and my way of walking through life. By believing them, I gave these myths the power to determine many of the choices and directions that became my story. Decades passed before I began to learn that I didn’t have to keep living the same story.
Now that I see them for what they are, I could fight those myths and fairy tales. But time is too precious to waste it fighting anyone or anything. So when I sense these old beliefs directing my choices and my moods, I name them what they are: big fat lies. Like most lies, they shrink from the light of the truth and go back where they came from.
What are the myths on which your life is built? Can you re-vision them into a life-enhancing truth you can live with?
