Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don’t. We’re only human, after all. In my life journey I have beliefs that sometimes conflict with observable reality. The issue, then, is whether to conform my beliefs to observable reality. Too often, I don’t. I assemble the facts and weigh them, often discarding compelling proofs that what I hold are mythical beliefs. But we all do this.
I will cite an example: my belief in the fundamental goodness of human beings.
I didn’t begin to drive until I was 40. I had lived in St. Louis 35 years before that and my friends either didn’t know or didn’t care that I didn’t drive (to be honest, I had occasionally operated a car but, only in emergency situations where my lack of skills was outweighed by other more pressing concerns). I also lived or spent time in Washington, D.C., New York City and Boston, where there’s real public transportation. But here in St. Louis I used public transit. Or I rode a bike, ran or walked, if traveling less than two miles. For most of that period I got around St. Louis (and the rest of the country) by hitchhiking. After high school, I hitched around the country and stayed in various places–I’d call home collect to let my family know I was alive. My most frequently traveled routes were between home and Colorado and home and Chicago.
In Chicago, I was a guest of friends at the University of Chicago. My friends were “wicked smart” and I had many interesting adventures in Chicago. I was questioned by the police only once-that wasn’t for free climbing the outside of a dorm, or rappelling down the side of another, or for trying out a wetsuit in Lake Michigan at 2 a.m. while highly inebriated and having a VERY large dead carp bump into me, inspiring me to race out of the lake, yelling “shark!– There’s a rumor I have been awarded several degrees from the U of C. If so, I freely admit I have not matriculated at that august institution.
I went out to Colorado one winter for a vacation, then returned the next year, staying for three years. I went to every restaurant in town and applied for manager. I wound up a live-in maid at Miller’s Idlewild Inn, a fabulous family place (which I hope is still exactly as it was then), which gave me room and board, $125.00 a month and a season ski pass. I always hitched rides and probably traveled more than 25,000 miles. Everyone was good to me, always kind. Many kept in touch after my trip with them. One ride was with a woman who became a close friend and taught me how to French kiss. I guess the worst thing that happened was that sometimes I had to post bond for my traveling companions when they were stopped for minor traffic violations, but I wasn’t paid back—whoopee.
Myth is an unproved personal or collective belief. Faith is a belief not based upon proof. If these are what I define them to be, my faith is also a myth. I’m OK with that. I think we have bogged down myth with huge bags of negative connotation and hide ourselves from the wonder that there is in faith or myth. For example, I recently heard two cosmologists explaining on NPR that the “Big Bang” is a myth. We don’t know what occurred at 10 to the negative 23rd (or was it 43rd) power seconds after the Big Bang, do we? But, using myth and faith gives us access to a startling description of the universe.
I’ve spent many nights looking at the sky, wondering what was there as I stood on a lonely highway awaiting the kindness of some stranger. I sang songs, made up songs, wrote a Broadway play (a Faustian musical), walked, slept under bridges, suffered from the weather. Countless times, I was rewarded by the kindness of strangers, sometimes sleeping, unharmed for hundreds of miles and arriving to be awakened with an offer of a meal or once, “white lightnin’” (whew, that wasn’t water!). I’ve been offered jobs in many cities. I was given assistance with a career in politics in Chicago. I was taught the words to “Begin the Beguine” by an old Marine who told me of the time he was on a break from battles in the South Pacific and had danced with a beautiful woman to that song on a moonlit night.
Despite so much evidence that so many people are so inhumane to one another, I hold to my myth of the goodness of people. When my neighbor called tonight to warn me that my car might be “plowed-in” when the city cleared the streets, I felt the goodness of humanity. When meals were dropped off while my family struggled with illness; when our snow was shoveled by someone. Or tonight, while I sat in “my” chair with my kids curled in my lap, with one or two kitties, and my wife nearby reading her magazine, I have faith that people are good, and believe.
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